This shot of Leonard Cohen was discovered in The Power Of Flower Photos posted May 7, 2012 at the KBIA web site, which features a series of "flower photos" by Darryl Pitt, a photographer best known for his portraits of musicians for magazines like Rolling Stone.He was also the manager of another 15-time Grammy winning saxophonist Michael Brecker.

An descriptive excerpt from The Power Of Flower Photos follows:

I can't remember exactly when I received the first flower email, but I do remember it was sometime in 2005. At the time, I had no idea why my old friend Darryl Pitt had sent it, but I didn't think too much about it. A flower. OK. That's nice. But then the flowers continued to arrive day after day after day — and soon a modest digital bouquet turned into a meadow, and that meadow into a hillside of, as always, flowers.  ...

It recently occurred to me that it was no accident that these flowers started showing up when they did. As I mentioned, it was 2005. That was a significant year for Darryl, because it was when he learned this his good friend and client, renowned saxophonist Michael Brecker, was seriously ill. It turned out that Michael had myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS. ...

And one day, as Darryl was biking home, he noticed something he'd never paid any attention to before: a garden, with flowers. The next morning, he returned with his camera. During Michael's hospitalization, a wall in his room filled up with Darryl's flowers, all taken from that same garden at 91st in Riverside Park. Michael died in January of 2007. During that month, and in fact during much of that year, not many flowers showed up. But in the years since, they've returned. And now, once again, they are a daily occurrence. Sometimes a word or two accompanies them, but mostly not. Just a quiet meditation from the dawn or the dusk — an homage to the power of friendship and the beauty it inspires.

No information is offered why Cohen is the only musician show in the slide show accompanying the article, the only appearance I've found of this photo on the internet until the past few days when it began turning up on music-focused web sites and Facebook pages.

The music for the film [Altoman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller] was largely by Leonard Cohen. Altman had immensely liked Cohen's debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), buying additional copies of it after wearing each one out. Then he had forgotten about the LP. A few years later, he visited Paris, just after finishing shooting on McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and rediscovered Cohen's album; he had it transferred and used the music to maintain a rhythm for the film (in effect using it as a "temp" track). Altman didn't expect to be able to procure rights for Cohen's music since McCabe was a Warner Brothers film and Cohen's album was released through Columbia Records. He called Cohen, expecting to trade off his recent success with M*A*S*H, but found that Cohen had no knowledge of it. Instead, Cohen had loved Altman's less popular follow-up film Brewster McCloud. Cohen arranged for his record company to license the music cheaply, even writing into the contract that sales of that album after the release of McCabe would turn some of the royalties to Altman (an arrangement which at the time was quite unusual). Later, on watching McCabe to come up with a guitar riff for one scene, Cohen decided he didn't like the film. Nonetheless, he honored his contract and recorded the music for it. A year later he called Altman to apologize, saying he had seen the film again and loved it.

This single black and white photo of Leonard Cohen taken by Govert de Roos qualifies for three DrHGuy photographic categories: Leonard Cohen Smoking, Drinking With Leonard Cohen, and the Headgear section of Taste Of Leonard Cohen. One assumes Leonard enjoyed Rotterdam in 1985.

Found by Hermitage Prisoner

All published images from the photo series, The Once Smokey Life of Leonard Cohen, can be viewed at Leonard Cohen – The Smokey Life. Also see Leonard Cohen – From Marlboro Man To Anti-smoking Troubadour.

While Leonard Cohen did not, during his 2008-2010 World Tour, perpetuate his 1994 tour habit of "drinking about three bottles of wine before every concert," early reports that he was "stoically devoted to song" and his own declaration that "I find I can't even drink a glass of wine"  appear to have been overstated. 

"You can drink it or you can nurse it" is from Light As The Breeze by Leonard Cohen. All other quotes are from Leonard Cohen Profile by Brian D. Johnson. Maclean's June 23, 2008

I think it's impossible to get through this veil of tears entirely sober. I'm more like Baudelaire: let me be drunk with wine, with women, with poetry - whatever the thing is.

The Baudelaire reference is to his poem, "Enivrez-Vous" (Poem #581) from Petits Poemes en Prose (Little Prose Poems). An English translation follows and is itself followed by the poem in its original French:

Get Drunk! by Charles Baudelaire

 Always be drunk.
 That's it!
 The great imperative!
 In order not to feel
 Time's horrid fardel
 bruise your shoulders,
 grinding you into the earth,
 Get drunk and stay that way.
 On what?
 On  wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
 But get drunk.
 And if you sometimes happen to wake up
 on the porches of a palace,
 in the green grass of a ditch,
 in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
 your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
 ask the wind,
 the wave,
 the star,
 the bird,
 the clock,
 ask everything that flees,
 everything that groans
 or rolls
 or sings,
 everything that speaks,
 ask what time it is;
 and the wind,
 the wave,
 the star,
 the bird,
 the clock
 will answer you:
 "Time to get drunk!
 Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
 Get drunk!
 Stay drunk!
 On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!

Enivrez-Vous by Charles Baudelaire

 Il faut être toujours ivre.
 Tout est là:
 c'est l'unique question.
 Pour ne pas sentir
 l'horrible fardeau du Temps
 qui brise vos épaules
 et vous penche vers la terre,
 il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
 Mais de quoi?
 De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu, à votre guise.
 Mais enivrez-vous.
 Et si quelquefois,
 sur les marches d'un palais,
 sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé,
 dans la solitude morne de votre chambre,
 vous vous réveillez,
 l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue,
 demandez au vent,
 à la vague,
 à l'étoile,
 à l'oiseau,
 à l'horloge,
 à tout ce qui fuit,
 à tout ce qui gémit,
 à tout ce qui roule,
 à tout ce qui chante,
 à tout ce qui parle,
 demandez quelle heure il est;
 et le vent,
 la vague,
 l'étoile,
 l'oiseau,
 l'horloge,
 vous répondront:
 "Il est l'heure de s'enivrer!
 Pour n'être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps,
 enivrez-vous;
 enivrez-vous sans cesse!
 De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise."

The Cohen quote is from "An Interview with Leonard Cohen"  by Richard Guilliatt (The Sunday Times Magazine, London. December 12, 1993) and was found at the always intoxicating  Speaking Cohen site. The poem by Charles Baudelaire and its English translation were found at The Wandering Minstrels.

He [Leonard Cohen] was the only guy who ever rehearsed for the Letterman show with a glass of red wine.

Paul Shaffer tells Rolling Stone why he was especially looking forward to Leonard Cohen’s acceptance speech.  From Leonard Cohen Enters Songwriters Hall Of Fame