Now That You Are Here

***

God is alive, magic is afoot.
God is alive, magic is afoot.
God is alive, magic is afoot.
God is afoot, magic is alive.
Alive is afoot, magic never died!

God never sickened.
Many poor men lied.
Many sick men lied.
Magic never weakened.
Magic never hid.
Magic always ruled. 

from "God is Alive, Magic is Afoot" by Leonard Cohen

***

I love to speak with Leonard
he's a sportsman, he's a shepherd
he's a lazy bastard
living in a suit.

from "Going Home" by Leonard Cohen

***

mister leonard cohen

welcome to istanbul

                   to constantinople

                   to byzantium

                   to the bridges i live under

                   to the seas i breathe

                   to the domes i top

now that you sleep under one of the roofs

i probably have passed by or over or under at least once

when searching for home

  and a line about home

  but most of all for a throat and a breath

perhaps i can show you around.

you’ve been doing the showing around

for far too long.

now that you stepped on both sides

of the foundation

and the doom of this city

you should

pray in our synagogues

pray on our bridge

pray while the call to prayer and the dusk and the hills

pray with a fishing pole in arnavutköy

pray as you start a new song about

pray beside the skeletons of our sultans and our caesars

pray with me

teach me to pray

teach me poetry

teach me song

in return

i will give you another seventy seven years and three hundred and sixty three days

in return, cavafy will come, though i’m afraid he’ll be hitting on you terribly

rumi will come, whoever he is, he will come, come, come again,

byron will come, dragging along a new mistress, dragging his foot,

hank williams will come and you know what, his cough is gone,

mister leonard cohen,

now that you are here,

if he manages finally to find his grave

Federico Lorca will come

and we’ll go grab bucharest and toulon and barcelona and boston and montreal for you

bring them all here

right in front of your guitar

and your bow

we have enough room in this city
to make you a lazy bastard for real.

mister leonard cohen,

now that you are finally somewhere here

don’t go.

September 17-30, 2012

I Don't Think I Want to be Something

I’m not sure I want to

go to college

I don’t think I want to be something
when anything is such a fine word—

not that I don’t want to amount for something

at the chilly biting end

but just not in that way.

I don’t have the urge right now

But I want to be able to want to be

a sailor with many tattoos

                                       scars

                                       lovers

                                       and fake lovers

                                       and many many many filthy stories of all these

the next moment.

And how do I know I haven’t always wondered about the life

of a dog breeder

or a dog

Maybe I first need to find that monastery

that I won’t live in, and a very rich wife

and some arsenic.

Possibly I just want to live,

possibly as the old herbalist who helps the main character after he falls in the river

-just for a page to two-

maybe I really don’t want any of it

to be my problem at all.

It is probable that big game hunting

might be my calling, or maybe I do carry

a crazy cat lady inside

that I need to nurture myself into

a heavy-handed rabbi

or a shameless poet

or maybe a little bit of both, like Leonard

(Nah, forget that one

he’s just another college boy.)

but why would not my lot be

to claw at mice

or to pound tribal drums

or trample fine Aegean grapes bare foot and all and drink the wine and love the wife

or live as a herd of seahorses

with sad sad eyes

no, higher education

where they finally let you be this or that

might not be for me after all

I’m not at all ready to give up on

any of the things

I know I can’t be.

All I Do

I used to write poetry
now small talk is all I do
why this works better for me
haven’t got a single clue

I used to write poetry
scribbling on the things that I
knew the great ones wrote about
which I’d never even try

I used to write poetry
now small talk is all I do
why this works better for me
haven’t got a single clue

Now small talk is all I do
and it’s all I’ll ever want
small talk to the life I live
and to the one I cannot

Now small talk is all I do
weather reports I speak of
to those I’d die to live with
to those I just can’t kill off

I used to write poetry
now small talk is all I do
why this works better for me
haven’t got a single clue

Why this works better for me
this taking of the final bow
this end to days of tea and
conversation with the crow

Why this works better for me
can well remain a mystery
I’m no more a gravedigger
poems the shovel I carry

I used to write poetry
now small talk is all I do
why this works better for me
haven’t got a single clue

Haven’t got a single clue
this spacious obedient heart
an abandoned place you say
I just call it a fresh start

Haven’t got a single clue
if I’m now a deserter
I would much rather believe
it’s the war that’s over.

I used to write poetry
now small talk is all I do
why this works better for me
haven’t got a single clue