<P> In her 2012 work, Cohen biographer Sylvie Simmons writes of the song: "Its sensual melody is paired with dark accusatory lyrics that are biblical in tone ." She called the stern sense of loss Cohen voiced, in the song, as "a touch disproportionate", given his long history of finding lovers who were already in relationships with other men . </P> <P> Cohen explained that he wrote the song partly about the break - up of his own long - term relationship with the Los Angeles graphic artist Suzanne Elrod in 1978 . In an interview for the 1979 Harry Rasky documentary film The Song of Leonard Cohen, he said: </P> <P> "The Gypsy's Wife" was one of the last and swiftest songs I've written . I started it in Los Angeles around the time I began recording (Recent Songs), which was last March or April (1978), and the song was ready in about three months . And, of course, my own marriage was breaking up at the time and, in a sense, it was written for my gypsy wife, in other words the wife that was wandering away . But in another way it's just a song about the way men and women have lost one another, that men and women have wandered away from each other and have become gypsies to each other . The last verse says There is no man or woman you can't touch . But you who come between them, you will be judged . In other words, even though we are in the midst of some kind of psychic catastrophe it's not an invitation to take advantage of it, and that's mostly what the song is about . </P> <P> Although Cohen referred in this interview to his "marriage" to Suzanne Elrod he later pointed out that "cowardice" and "fear" had prevented him from actually marrying her . Elrod is the mother of both of Cohen's children: his son Adam Cohen (born 1972) and daughter Lorca (born 1974). </P>

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