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Lines for Leonard
-for L. Cohen on his birthday, 21st September
Suzanne takes you down
to her mansion of pearls…
blood pearls grace the violin
the psalm of death is heard
and the scent of kisses,
submarine
you discover the lovers
moving on crutches…
exploring the water songs
dragging their wings
like old angels
beneath the demon of sound,
they love and die
beneath the umbrella of lions,
they write secret letters
to their fathers.
they ask you to be their king
but you only wait on them,
like a boy in a hotel.
25 comments:
Kinda reminds me of Luke Skywalker speaking with Yoda...
It could've well been silence... but the same message would be conveyed... a grateful thanks from a poet to his mentor.
Kudos!
Cheers,
-Johnny Deep.
"I sing this for the crickets,
I sing this for the army,
I sing this for your children
and for all who do not need me.
"I'd like to tell my story,"
said one of them so bold,
"Oh yes, I'd like to tell my story
'cause you know I feel I'm turning into gold."..."
...man,you're weaving words into a golden web for a man whose web entangles us all...
one of these days, dissect one of your poems, just once, explain yourself, just once, so one knows what exactly you think too. just once, hearing a poet dissect his own poem will be quite an experience. you see in class rooms dissecting a dead man's verse is all very fine; but just once, do it to yourself too!
and you're english honours right? ju right? wont be tough then, or will it? heh!
do it. symbols, metaphors, critical analysis , that kinda stuff, to yourself.
i think your readers would like that. :)
Take This Praise, Inam..... its brilliant!
Brilliant Inam! And I can't resist mentioning that once I attempted to translate Suzanne here...
Unfortunately my Bangla blog doesn't get properly rendered in non-IE browsers
@ adreeka: ah... but if i dissect them, wont they bleed and die on the operation table? Rather isn't it better that I kill myself each time so that they may live. Infinite in their freedom. Grow on their own...fight...play....fall in love...marry...be unfaithful..get angry...give birth themselves...kill...travel to hills at twilight...so much... how could I end it all for them? :-) (there's a prof in my college who finished 6 sonnets by Shakespeare in 45 mins. tragic heh :D). But let me try...
let me just try...
After all, every poem of mine is about freedom.
In all its forms. Freedom in the real, and in the unreal. freedom in the art, and the artist.
Every poem is an exploration of the unconscious...mine and the collective. Consciously and unconsciously. Sometimes I explore Freud...at other times he explores me.
Every poem is about the scent of women...wet with the day...the smell of deserts or rivers or forests in their soft arms...dreaming of love at midnight... sometimes the smell is strong. sometimes its a faint magic.
What else?
aah.. its not dissection anymore.. its poetry again..you described your poetry in lyrics again! but i grant the poet this freedom..! you do have poetic license i suppose..
and this may be taken as a compliment, you remind me of marquez.
magic realism, surrealism, romantic realism..
what else?
(oh n thats me, adreeka!)
U have used stuff which is sinking into me..very,very slow.Roll another one,man,and start telling..
@adreeka: Oh! I take that as a compliment with all my heart (bows and all) :) I love Marquez.... "the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love"...is that the line...
as for poetic licence, well i guess i use that phrase a lot when they ask me about my hairstyle :D guess it fits in.
@auritro: Rolling man, rolling...one for Cohen and one for you :) fresh weed from the snowy hiils. SMOKING IT UP!
A gentle combination of Cohen's words and your images. This one is beautifully mesmerizing- and like most of your poems, exotic and hypnotic!
yeah that is the line..
Interesting to find someone paying tribute to Len Cohen. Congratulations. But I am being frank. I could not understand a phrase of what you wrote. However I can relate to most of Cohen's songs. His songs are NOT abstract at all. Most poetry lovers find it comfortable to get into abstractions. No harm meant. I am asking everyone who has read this piece... can anyone explain to me...what is it about? I tried to read the explanation which inam wrote...but poetry is not always an exploration of the sub conscious...in fact none of the arts are. Secondly are your writings too personal? Then its no use for me to find meanings..cause may be you don't feel the necessity to communicate. Leonard Cohen is not all inaccessible.
@Neel: Whoever said that a tribute to cohen has to follow cohen's style? :O
and whoever said that poems are for explaining? Poems are to be felt...gliding over your skin and inside. but of course, the skin has to be sensitive too.
moreover, when I was talking about "every poem" being an exploration of the unconscious, i was quite evidently referring to "every poem" of mine. Having said that, I will also stand by the fact that no art (rather, no human act) can be utterly dissociated from the unconscious.
As for cohen being abstract or not, well his later songs like "First We Take Manhattan", "Jazz Police", "Take this Waltz" (which is of course a transcreation from Lorca) and "A Thousand Kisses Deep" are quite complex...and often postmodernist in their technique. One may not interpret the meaning of a line...but remark at the astonishing level of imagery.
You are right though, when you say I don't find it necessary to communicate. I will start distributing union pamphlets when i need to do that, for sure :) I don't think when the surrealist poet Tristan Zara was creating lines offhand from his unconscious, he was actually wanting to publish pamphlets. True also for the intricate network of imagery in Jibanananda Das or Lorca.
Meaning is only incidental to art, not essential.
Art for art's sake. And limitless too.
Well...A tribute to Leonard Cohen cannot be anything any poet writes. There has to be something in the poetry other than just calling it a tribute. There has to be some little thing that makes it a tribute to Cohen. Otherwise its almost like calling abaar aranya a tribute to aranyer din ratri!
Agreed poetry is not meant for explanation...and it truely needs sensitivity and feeling. I admit that in your case I definitely lack both! :)
The songs of Cohen that you've mentioned definitely have some very substantial meanings attached. Cohen is extremely precise and sure about what he's trying to say. There might be tons of styles and techniques used in songwriting but whats most important is what the writer or in this case the songwriter wants to say
Distribution of union pamphlets has nothing to do with communication!...Dylan, cohen, baez, lennon, eliot, rimbaud, shelley, dante, shakespeare, tagore, garcia, shakti, sumon...all needed to say somethings...needed to communicate....and they just did that very succesully!
Aestheticism is dead and gone.
Admit that the waters around you have grown. :)
now now now there's a big problem here. which is on a different plane altogether :) one person's not enjoying (i'm not using the word "understanding", coz as i said poems ain't meant to be "understood") a poem doesn't make it a non-poem. Eliot's Waste Land would have been in the waste-bin then :D . It was termed a "non-poem" by many of the time.
That Morrison is more accessible than Coltrane (I'm sure you'll agree) doesn't make Coltrane the lesser artist.
A Pete Seger anti-war song might be more "in your face" than Picasso's "Guernica" on the Spanish Civil War havoc... but I dare not doubt the latter's sense of aesthetics. can't say for you though :)
you mentioned Shakti i think. now don't tell me his "mahua" induced "Abani Bari Achho?" makes any one-track meaning to you. rather, it opens the soul to a thousand adventures, I think.
well yes i agree, a poem by "any poet" like me may not be an ideal tribute to Cohen.
But then, one must also stop "recreating/transcreating" Tagore and Dylan songs to sound hip. :)
and well son, "the waters might have grown". but that's only coz "the times they are a-changin' " . We've left straight-narrative, direct-meaning, and moon-spoon rhyme poetry long time back, as far as my little knowledge of literature tells me :)
here's something I'll leave you with:
--Cinema Calendar of the Abstract Heart--
"the fibres give in to your starry warmth
a lamp is called green and sees
carefully stepping into a season of fever
the wind has swept the river's magic
and I've perforated the nerve
by the clear frozen lake
has snapped the sabre
but the dance round terrace tables
shuts in the shock of the marble shudder
new sober"
- Tristan Tzara
Now, to me, thats is art too. Just as Shelly's "To a Skylark". That's coz there is no idee fixe in art.
To limit art is to stop being an artist.
"Aestheticism is dead and gone"
please explain yourself.
'They did not listen...they're not listening still...perhaps they never will!' Bye
@Neel: 'They did not listen...they're not listening still...perhaps they never will!'
you are right, son. They'll never listen to the Jazz Police. van Gogh for instance. If you know what I mean. :)
ushami@ aestheticism is definitely not dead and gone...what I menat was somehow i find it a bit dated concept...nevertheless great works have come of it! So don;'t mistunderstand me.
Inam@ poetry is difinitely to be felt and never explained. I agree. I am more kene on communication! thats just it. And what's this 'son' business?? lolz
awww...dun let the mean comments get you down...abstractly beautiful i must say..
heh!
Apt Imagery,, Cohen is proud of u..he whispered hush hush drawin me close...2 kudos to u mr. malik :)
FINE! RAZOR EDGE TECHNOLOGY?
The poem and the refutations...
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