I remember the moment as if it happened today. I remember it as if it was the moment which precedes every moment. At 10 years old I rode my bicycle to the South Huntington Library, in Long Island, New York. This library of the neighboring town had a superior selection, compared to our local Harborfields Public library. I walked in, found the poetry section, pulled a book off the shelf, and opened up to a random page. The book was “Selected Poems 1955-1968” and the author was Leonard Cohen, a “singer” whose music I had heard countless times, along with that of Bob Dylan, as a passenger in my father’s car. It was on page 233 that my life changed. It was a simple poem, entitled “A Person Who Eats Meat.” I read: “A person who eats meat wants to get his teeth into something. A person who does not eat meat, wants to get his teeth into something else.” The deep 10 year old that I thought I was, paused for a moment, reflected, found it fascinating. I returned to the final lines: “If these thoughts interest you, even for a moment, you are lost.” The cosmos had gently slapped me in the face, and it used Leonard Cohen’s hand. The message was very simple: dig deeper, little boy. When the cosmos speaks that clearly to you, only a fool would ignore it. I, who aspire not to be a fool, had no choice but to comply. I have not stopped digging.
In the nearly three decades since that time I not only hung on Leonard’s every word, but I also delved deep into world religions, theology, existentialism, and my own, at times rather tumultuous, life. His early work, which often contained suggestive and darker allusions, reflected his era, and was well suited to my teens and early 20s. His later work, which I have enjoyed as something of an adult, spoke to the ages. Leonard masterfully used the voice of God, and man in ecstasy and terror, in the face of the divine. He balanced delicately and piercingly the interplay between the sacred and the mundane, the holy and the demonic, the essential and the existential, meaning and meaninglessness. His lyrics: “a million candles burning for the love that never came,” “behold the gates of mercy, in arbitrary space, and none of us deserving, the cruelty or the grace,” “He wants to write a love song, an anthem of forgiving, a manual for living with defeat” are eternal and timeless descriptions of the human condition. They have also become the core themes of my own interior landscape. It is no wonder that as Leonard described poetry as “the constitution of the inner country” that his work has had such an enduring impact on me personally, and my writing, which attempts to communicate in what I called, in a poem published in the Bards Annual 2019 Anthology, “the inner dialect.”
For many years, writing has been a passion of mine. In early 2019 I penned a screenplay which has just completed production. I also previously published dense political articles for The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C., though I no longer standby those opinions. It wasn’t until 2018, however, two years after Leonard’s passing, that I began to find my own poetic voice. Sitting on my patio, I lamented that I might not hear a new Leonard Cohen song ever again, I wrote the following, as one of my first poems, entitled “The Master”
Because his death was something, my heart could not withstand,
I asked the master for a final poem, and offered up my hand
I said “for many years, I’ve been a student of the word,
And if you speak to me, I’ll help your voice be heard”
Then the master softly spoke “did you think those words were mine to tell?
You must know that I procured them, from deep within that great communal well.
And there, young man, you may go fishing, but if anything retrieved,
I’m afraid you’ve got that burden, from which I’ve been relieved.”
And then the master did retreat, back into that great abyss
From which all beings spring, and into which we are dismissed.
Yet in departing, he did leave a final remnant, a tiny piece of dust
As if to say, that’s all a man can give, the beauty’s not from us
So, I sat there for a moment, and then found some fresh new pages,
Knowing that is all a pilgrim has, when he goes to meet the ages
And dutifully I will wait here, with that paper and my pen
And my little promise, that when the spirit speaks, I’ll transcribe all I can
___________
Midway through 2019, in response to a text message in which a friend mistakenly thought Bob Dylan had passed away, I went into a deep reflection about the loss of Cohen and the inevitable loss of Dylan. Early that day I dwelled for a period of time on Cohen’s suggestion that there are both a divine and a human will in each of us, and between the two exists the religious enterprise. I penned the following:
If the prophets all go home,
with no heir to hold their torch
may the oceans be reduced to foam
and we build museums with remorse
For if the will that burns in each of us
is not the one we choose to serve
to life itself we have become treasonous
And we get the hollowness we deserve
I heard Dylan and Cohen speak and sing
the voice of god was in their tunes
but the bells of freedom that did ring
belong to each and every moon
And while the spirit still blows where it will
and we cannot command it as our own
it may yet select our hearts to fill
and in our art make temporary home
And that is why I sit here with my pen and pad
Knee-deep in that finest meditation
indifferent to claims that I’ve gone mad
or that poetry is an unsuitable vocation
I never bought that brand of sanity
where culture was confused with marketplace
products are preferred above humanity
and unlived dreams are commonplace
But if that will which burns in each of us
becomes the only one we serve
self-doubt shall not bind the holy impetus
and that torch’s flame will be preserved
_______________________________
Finally, in response to my own lines above, I decided it was time to dedicate myself to poetry. In a poem that is in part the inverse of Cohen’s famous hymn “Hallelujah,” where unlike David, I do not please the Lord, and with allusions to “If It Be Your Will” and “Joan of Arc,” I wrote, what at the time of this writing, is my most recent poem.
I once reached into the ether
for sublime words that I could share
But each one did fall beneath her
to whom my best would not compare
She said: you are drenched in varnish
but all my people have no glare
Hear me, for I birthed the prophets
and you, young man, are not their heir
Well, I trembled at this trumpet
it shook me to my soul
but I was not made to crumble
and instead I raised my goal
So, I gathered all my kindling
then I trekked up old Mount Sinai
and said, if you be so willing
have this fire as our alibi
She said earth is temporary
just as those who seek its favor
they that seemed extraordinary
were forsaken like that savior
I said I know the truthsayers
and though unfit to walk their path
Indeed, I’ve come for this affair
as all, but you, to me is wrath
She said then join me in this fire
but know that varnish won’t survive
there is no room for false attire
if you wish in Truth to be alive
I pledged myself to love, not pride
to live and die in just your name
So here, right now, I’ll climb inside
I won’t resist this perfect flame.
Fevers of the Mind 