Remembrance

There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names to time.



I am not sad nor mourning.
Eternity’s a myth,
for me, and why
‘rest in peace’
should matter after death
is beyond me.
 
There is just this arc that soared
higher, brighter, laden
with double-edged words
and songs and silent laughter
with wit, compassion,
sadness, rage
and knowing humour,
an arc that awed.

Now we see its end
and know its form
complete.
 
 
When I first started listening to Leonard Cohen, when I was 13, I had no idea that he was so recently on the music scene. He was the sound-track of my teenagerhood and I saved up for his LPs. He accompanied my growing up and his were some of the very few poetry books I bought at university. I shrugged at the people who found him depressing – his bone-dry humour always appealed to me – and I never shared the view that he was unmusical. I first heard him in concert at the Albert Hall in 1976 with the good friend who came with me to his gigs at the O2 in London in 2008 and Wembley Arena in 2012. I feared when I heard him in Manchester in 2013 that it was the last time and so it was, despite his ability to skip onto and off the stage. I wish I could have gone to many, many more of his gigs but I am enormously grateful for the tunes and words that come to me as I go about my ordinary days and I will not be sad for a life which spoke truth and peace and compassion and which illuminated so many others.