So long Leonard Cohen . . . a farewell from Michael O’Leary
Beginning life as a
middle-class son
Comfortable in your
Jewish Catholicism
Tailor-made for the
family’s business
You chose the more
difficult artist’s path
Through the Montreal
You played youth’s
favourite games
Slim volumes proffering
Flowers for the Fürher:
Eichmann’s normal human
perversions
More polite than the gutter snipe
Rock and rollers, who said they joined
A band to get laid: young Cohen said
He played music to meet women
In the late 1960s when every belief
Came to an end: when The Beatles’ apple
Turned to pulp without the future fiction
You came along with a song from a room
A muse, in the real sense of ‘to amuse’
Someone who spoke openly about thought
And feeling, perhaps here was a poet
Who wasn’t alive a hundred years ago
Who wasn’t ‘beat’ or rock ‘n roll, exactly
But came so far, with a Spanish guitar,
With a seductive voice and lyric to match –
Existential, if you’ll pardon the expression
So all our Suzanne’s took us all down
To our own lands of rags and feathers;
Remembering well that Chelsea Hotel
You went into God’s Hamburger Bar in
The city of Angels
‘One with Everything’ . . .
becoming a Buddhist
Monk to escape the world of pain and love
Old songs and new could
not be suppressed
So you returned to the
world to bring them,
To sing them to audiences old and new
Hallelujah, Hallelujah:
from below and above
Dancing to the end of
love, you twirled
Full circle, singing so
long Marianne, by e-mail
As she lay dying, remembering Greek Isles
Sunshine and smiles,
farewell dreaming
It’s now as dark as you
want it, Leonard
But remember, there’s
always that crack
Perhaps you really have
come to understand
Now, that’s where the
light truly gets in . . .
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