Cohen

Mid-week poetry break

Almost exactly 5 years ago, I wandered the streets of Tokyo, recording myself singing loudly and sadly – an act viewed as akin to madness in Japan. It was my way of paying tribute to the great lyricist Leonard Cohen who died in November 2016.

So, Bob Dylan got a Nobel prize for literature. I’d contend that Cohen would have been the better choice, something Dylan himself might have approved of. The two were friends, and Dylan was a fan.

Long before he became famous, Cohen knew whom he wanted to speak to. In a letter to his publisher, he described his putative audience as, “inner-directed adolescents, lovers in all degrees of anguish, disappointed Platonists, pornography-peepers, hair-handed monks and Popists.”

Shortly before he died, Cohen spoke to David Remnick of The New Yorker, who has written one of the more definitive pieces on Cohen’s life, work and mind .

Cohen talked about his impending death and how several poems he was working on would remain incomplete – a regret, although one he’d made peace with. He then closed his eyes and recited one of these:

  “Listen to the hummingbird

Whose wings you cannot see

 Listen to the hummingbird

Don’t listen to me

 Listen to the mind of God

 Which doesn’t need to be

 Listen to the mind of God

Don’t listen to me.”

*****

Here are some of his verses, for the subscribers only, mid-week poetic missive.