Thanks to Leonard Cohen

[RonPrice]

COHEN?S SHISH KEBAB

 

After finishing my writing and reading last night it was a little after 2 a.m. I went downstairs and turned on the TV to rest my eyes and brain before going to bed. I was surprised to see Leonard Cohen in an interview on one of the Australian TV stations.1 The interview inspired me that same afternoon to read about Cohen on the internet. The material here comes from several interview sites.2 ?I feel tremendously relieved,? said Cohen in 2005 at the age of 70, ?that I?m not worried about my happiness. There are things of course that make me happy?..But what I am so happy about is that the background of distress and discomfort I had had in my life has at last evaporated. It?s not that I don?t feel distressed or sad about things that I see and know and what happens to people around me. It?s not that the emotions don?t come, it?s just that the background is clear. Before?it was very dark. I could pierce the darkness. Before?..there was a kind of mist, a kind of distress over everything, but that has lifted at last. ?Ron Price with thanks to 1Leonard Cohen, Interview with Leonard Cohen, August 2nd 2006, 2:00-3:00 A.M. TV; and ?An Interview in 2005,? Kari Hesthamar, Los Angeles, 2005.

 

You?ve been writing poetry

as long as my life?s been

associated with the permeation

of that light, with that most

wonderful and thrilling motion

with the very inception of the

Kingdom of God on earth

when the manifest Standard

began waving in the centre

of the great continent where

we were born and raised.

 

It?s been a heavy trip for you,

Leonard, and I?m so pleased

your distress and discomfort

has evaporated at last?me too,

Leonard, me too: at last a lifting,

an ease,a tranquillity never known,

forgiveness and an early peach

with all labour put away---well,

not quite all, eh Leonard, eh?---

the heart still cooks, sizzling like,

how did you put it?shish kebab?

 

Ron Price

August 2nd 2006

[Jerry]

Bravo, bravo, RonPrice. Inspiring. Excellent tribute you have penned to a fellow poet.

 

What I find in Cohen is an innovative way of expressing things. He doesn't say 'everyone wants love' - instead he says, 'everyone wants a box of chocolates and a long stem rose' (Everybody Knows).

 

And he doesn't say "two thousand years of western civilization", he says 'from that bloody cross on top of calvary to the (beach?) at Malibu.'