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The Flame

Page 3

by Leonard Cohen

I won’t be able to sing it

  Because it will climb too high

  She will sing it beautifully

  And I’ll correct her singing

  And she’ll correct my writing

  Until it is better than beautiful

  Then we’ll listen to it

  Not often

  Not always together

  But now and then

  For the rest of our lives

  ROSHI’S POEM

  Whenever I hear

  The edgeless sound

  In the deep night

  O Mother!

  I find you again.

  Whenever I stand

  Beneath the light

  Of the seamless sky

  O Father!

  I bow my head.

  The sun goes down

  Our shadows dissolve

  The pine trees darken

  O Darling!

  We must go home.

  Tr. Leonard Cohen

  KANYE WEST IS NOT PICASSO

  Kanye West is not Picasso

  I am Picasso

  Kanye West is not Edison

  I am Edison

  I am Tesla

  Jay-Z is not the Dylan of anything

  I am the Dylan of anything

  I am the Kanye West of Kanye West

  The Kanye West

  Of the great bogus shift of bullshit culture

  From one boutique to another

  I am Tesla

  I am his coil

  The coil that made electricity soft as a bed

  I am the Kanye West Kanye West thinks he is

  When he shoves your ass off the stage

  I am the real Kanye West

  I don’t get around much anymore

  I never have

  I only come alive after a war

  And we have not had it yet

  March 15, 2015

  OLD FRIENDS

  An old man tells his friend (over the telephone) that

  he is going to shule that evening. It is a broken-

  down shule in a hostile black neighbourhood in Los

  Angeles. There is never even half a minyan (ten

  men). The worshippers are old, the prayers are badly

  spoken, the place is draughty and full of shabbiness

  and lumbago. The old man is inviting his friend to

  laugh with him over the wreck of a failed spiritual

  adventure, an adventure in which both of them once

  cherished the highest hopes. But his friend does not

  laugh. His friend becomes Nachmanides, the

  Bodhidharma, and St. Paul all rolled into one religious

  accountant. “You should not have told me that you

  were going to shule. You lose all the merit you

  would have gained had you remained silent.” What?

  Merit? Silence? Who is the old man talking to?

  That’s rich. His friend is rebuking him for boasting

  about his piety, but he lets it go (sort of). After

  they say goodnight, the old man puts on his robes,

  which don’t fit so well now that he’s given up

  smoking. There is an almost full bottle of Prozac on

  his night-table. He bought the refill a couple of

  months ago, but almost immediately stopped taking

  the pill. It didn’t work. Hardly anything works

  anymore. You can’t even tell your friend (over the

  telephone) about your lumbago without getting a

  lecture. At least his dentist didn’t reproach him

  when he went back last week. After two years’

  absence and a rotting mouth which everyone

  (dentist, assistant, himself) could smell when the

  scraping started. His dentist was an old man too.

  “Let’s tackle this,” was all he said. The old man ties

  the strings of his robe and puts on all the lights in

  the house (so he won’t get robbed again). He drives

  into the war zone, locking his doors on the way, and

  he parks in the courtyard of the zendo (it isn’t really

  a shule). Eunice is there. She’s been there for

  twenty-five years. “At my age,” I heard her say the

  other night, something about how easily she catches

  cold now. Koyo is there. I forget his Christian name.

  The fingers of his right hand are swollen from a cat

  bite. Infected. He fumbles with the incense. Eunice

  sneezes and coughs and hacks. A police helicopter

  drowns out the chanting. The place is freezing. Just

  the three of us. The fluff is coming out of the

  cushion, just like the juice is coming out of this

  story, and I’m not pissed off at you anymore either,

  Steve. And what is more, old friend, you have a

  point. You have a point.

  1985

  THE APPARENT TURBULENCE

  You were the last young woman

  to look at me that way

  When was it

  sometime between 9/11 and the tsunami

  You looked at my belt

  and then I looked down at my belt

  you were right

  it wasn’t bad

  then we resumed our lives.

  I don’t know about yours

  but mine is curiously peaceful

  behind the apparent turbulence

  of litigation and advancing age

  WATCHING THE NATURE CHANNEL

  the boredom of God

  is heartbreaking

  fiddle fiddle fiddle

  THE CREATURE

  the creature who says

  “me” and “mine”

  need not bend down in shame—

  along with lakes and mountains

  the ego is created

  and divine

  THE INDIAN GIRL

  You’re waiting. You’ve always been waiting. It’s nothing new. You’ve waited whenever you wanted anything, and you were waiting when the kettle sang to the canary and the Indian girl let you make love to her secretly before she died in a car accident. You were waiting for your wife to become sweet, you were waiting for your body to become thin and muscular, and the girl from India, in her apartment on Mackay Street, she said, Leonard, you’ve been waiting for me all afternoon, especially when we were all listening to the canary in your wife’s kitchen, that’s when it really got to you, the three of us standing in front of the cage, the kettle whistling and our great expectations for the canary, the song that was going to lift the three of us out of the afternoon, out of the winter—that’s when the waiting was too much for you, that’s when I understood how deeply and impersonally you desired me, and that’s when I decided to invite you into my arms. Supposing she said this to herself. And then I drove her home and she invited me up to her apartment and she did not resist my profound impersonal affection for her dark unknown person, and she saw how general, how neutral, how relentlessly impersonal was this man’s aching for her—and she took me to the green Salvation Army couch, among the student furniture, she took me because she was going to die in two weeks in a car accident on the Laurentian highway, she took me in one of her last embraces, because she saw how simple I would be to comfort, and I was so grateful to be numbered among her last generous activities on this earth. And I went back to my wife, my young wife, the one who would never thaw, who would bear me children, who would hate me for one good reason or another all the days of her life, who would know a couple of my friends a little too well. We stood, the three of us, listening to the duet of the canary and the kettle, the steam clouding the windows of our kitchen on Esplanade, and the Montreal winter shutting everything down but the heart of hope. Mara was her name, and she came to visit us, as we made visits in those days, driving through the snow to meet someone new.

  1980

  MARY FULL OF GRACE

  You
step out of the shower

  Oh so cool and clean

  Smelling like a flower

  From a field of green

  The world is burning Mary

  It’s hollow dark and mean

  I love to hear you laugh

  It takes the world away

  I live to hear you laugh

  I don’t even have to pray

  But now the world is coming back

  It’s coming back to stay

  Stand beside me Mary

  We have no time to waste

  The water’s not like water now

  It has a bitter taste

  Stand beside me Mary

  Mary full of grace

  I know you have to leave me

  The clock is ticking loud

  I know it’s time to leave me

  The time has come around

  My heart has turned to weaponry

  That’s why my head is bowed

  Stand beside me Mary

  We have no time to waste

  The animal is bleeding

  And the flower is disgraced

  Stand beside me Mary

  Mary full of grace

  THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

  The Los Angeles Times

  is going to be read

  by a man named Carlo.

  He will die carrying his wife

  (who cannot use her legs)

  to the bathroom.

  I will sit in the sun

  writing about them.

  My dog will die,

  my hamster, my turtle

  my white rat, my tropical fish

  my Moroccan squirrel.

  My mother and father will die,

  and so will my friends Robert and Derek.

  Sheila will die

  in her new life without me.

  My high school teacher will die,

  Mr. Waring.

  Frank Scott will die,

  leaving a freer Canada behind him.

  Glenn Gould will die

  in the midst of his glory.

  Marshall McLuhan will die

  having altered several meanings.

  Milton Acorn will die

  just after putting out his cigar

  on my carpet.

  Lester B. Pearson will die

  wearing the bow tie of Winston Churchill.

  Bliss Carman will die

  before I learned about his loneliness.

  The Group of Seven will die

  having made some places famous

  where I used to camp,

  where I pitched my tent

  and gutted fish

  in the loving sight of Anne of Carlyle.

  My brother-in-law,

  the most eminent of all Frequent Flyers,

  he will die a True Son of the Law

  and leave my sister 2 million miles.

  It doesn’t matter

  that all these deaths occurred

  long before I prophesized them.

  History will overlook

  the tiny glitches in sequential time

  and concentrate

  rather

  on my relentless concern

  with matters mostly Canadian.

  Terrace of Medical Building, November 15, 1999

  YOU WANT TO STRIKE BACK AND YOU CAN’T

  You want to strike back and you can’t

  And you want to help but you can’t

  And the gun won’t shoot

  And the dynamite won’t explode

  And the wind is blowing the other way

  And no one can hear you

  And death is everywhere

  And you’re dying anyhow

  And you’re tired of the war

  And you can’t explain one more time

  You can’t explain anymore

  And you’re stuck behind your house

  Like an old rusted truck

  That will never haul another load

  And you’re not leading your life

  You’re leading someone else’s life

  Someone you don’t know or like

  And it’s ending soon

  And it’s too late to begin again

  Armed with what you know now

  And all your stupid charities

  Have armed the poor against you

  And you’re not who you wanted to be

  Not remotely he or she

  How am I going to get out of this

  The untidy mess the untidiness

  Never to be clean again or free

  Soiled by gossip and publicity

  You’re tired and it’s over

  And you can’t do any more

  That’s what this silence

  That’s what this song is for

  And you can’t explain anymore

  And you can’t dig in

  Because the surface is like steel

  And all your fine emotions

  Your subtle insights

  Your famous understanding

  Evaporate into stunning

  (To you) irrelevance

  I don’t remember when

  I wrote this

  It was long before 9/11

  WHEN YOU WAKE UP

  When you wake up into the panic

  and the tulips from Ralph’s

  have almost had it,

  why don’t you change the water

  and cut the stems,

  maybe find a vase a little taller

  to help them stand up straight?

  When you wake up into the panic

  and the Devil’s almost got you

  to throw yourself off the cliffs of religion,

  why don’t you lie down

  in front of the ferocious traffic

  of your daily life

  and get creamed by some of the details?

  December 13, 1993

  WHEN DESIRE RESTS

  You know I’m looking at you

  you know what I’m thinking

  you know you’re interested

  I am very skillful

  you will forget that I am old

  unless you want to remember it

  unless you want to see

  what happens to desire

  how free it becomes

  how shamelessly involved in love

  for every woman

  and her stockings.

  When desire rests,

  it is signaled by two people

  faraway on a green blanket

  (or is it the flowers of moss);

  two people waving from a distance

  stretched out like things

  that have to dry

  with tender smiles on their

  little round faces;

  waving at desire

  as it rests in the foreground

  foothill-shaped, peaceful,

  devoted as a dog made of tears.

  WHAT IS COMING 2.16.03

  what is coming

  ten million people

  in the street

  cannot stop

  what is coming

  the American Armed Forces

  cannot control

  the President

  of the United States

  and his counselors

  cannot conceive

  initiate

  command

  or direct

  everything

  you do

  or refrain from doing

  will bring us

  to the same place

  the place we don’t know

  your anger against the war

  your horror of death

  your calm strategies

  your bold plans

  to rearrange

  the middle east

  to overthrow the dollar

  to establish

  the 4th Reich

  to live forever

  to silence the Jews

  to order the cosmos

  to tidy up your life

  to improve religion />
  they count for nothing

  you have no understanding

  of the consequences

  of what you do

  oh and one more thing

  you aren’t going to like

  what comes after

  America

  WHAT I DO

  It’s not that I like

  to live in a hotel

  in a place like India

  and write about G-d

  and run after women

  It seems to be

  what I do

  SCHOOL DAYS

  I headed the school

  I was the school head

  John was the arms

  Peggy was the asshole

  and Jennifer the toes.

  I loved the asshole best.

  In my striped football sweater

  and in my v-neck hockey shirt

  I was a sight.

  No wonder Peggy fell

  under my influence.

  Until the accident.

  Then I lost her.

  Flags wave and banners ripple.

  All is lost for the visiting team.

  There I am in a bad seat

  scowling at our victory.

  I cannot take my eyes off

  her little bouncing skirt.

  I’m talking about the cheerleader

  named Peggy.

  That was forty-seven years ago.

  The Past.

  I never think about The Past

  but sometimes

  The Past thinks about me

  and sits down

  ever so lightly on my face—

  And me and Peggy

  and John and Jennifer,

  our scarves in the wind,

  we’re speeding

  in the family roadster

  to someone’s house

  in Nantucket

  and I can walk again.

  THE FLOWERS HATE US

  the flowers hate us

  the animals pray for our death

  as soon as i found out

  i murdered my dog

  now i knew what they were up to

  the daisy the iris the rose

  why there was no peace among men

  why nothing worked

  there is no going back

  throw out your friend’s bouquet

  kill the animals all of them

  but don’t eat their meat

  now that i know what they’re thinking

  their sex organs in the air

  their stinking fur

  and their tug at the heart

  what they would do to us if they won

  how great it will be without them

  just getting on with our short lives

  which are longer than theirs

 

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