Geoff Stevens
The Penultimate Leonard Cohen Poem
Where now is Marriane?
Headless from Hydra, and gone back
to the ice-cold fiords of Norway?
Have Perla and Julie
been cloistered in a nunnery?
Is Janis visiting Kris Kristoffersen
or picking up strange men
in some celestial lift,
even older than the Chelsea’s
elevator of wire-mesh?
Meditating, in the ultra-quiet,
near-silence, to the slow crushing
of crocuses,
an unspoken, and gravelless,
mantra, on his miming lips,
Cohen is past blue,
is in his saffron period now,
"repent- repent- !" repenting, perhaps,
as a Buddhist,
or most likely waiting for the miracle
to come.
Perhaps he will be re-incarnated
as a poet, a poetess even,
or a choir soprano in a kibbutz,
or even the Dalai Lama.
He has no chance
if he thinks of a rebirth
as a second Leonard Cohen.
with his voice
a dried, saffron orange-yellow,
pollinating surrender
in the hearts of women,
and his well-mannered, ageing looks
rejuvenated to the Montreal youthfulness,
of when he was Canada’s foremost poet.
selling two-hundred books.
and destined for much worse.
And now it’s come.
Wolfe is at the door.
the Fundamentalists are on the heights
of Abraham.
first they’ve destroyed the Buddhas in Kabul
and now they’ll close the seduction industry.
Everything will become a religious Saturday -
a closing time holiday for Leonard Cohens
and a return to purdah
for all women.
Page(s) 18
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