Categories: POETRY

THIS IS FOR YOU: Poetry of Leonard Cohen

THIS IS FOR YOU

This is for you, it is my full heart, it is the book I meant to read you when we were old. Now I am a shadow, I am restless as an empire. You are the woman who released me I saw you watching the moon. You did not hesitate to love me with it, I saw you honouring the windflowers caught in the rocks. You loved me with them on the smooth sand, between pebbles and shoreline. You welcomed me into the circle, more than a guest. All this happened in the truth of time, in the truth of flesh. I saw you with a child, you brought me to his perfume, and his visions without demand of blood, on so many wooden tables adorned with food and candles. A thousand sacraments which you carried in your basket, I visited my clay, I visited my birth until I became small enough and frightened enough, to be born again. I wanted you for your beauty, you gave me more than yourself. You shared your beauty, you gave me more than yourself. This I only learned tonight, as I recall the mirrors, you walked away from after you had given them, whatever they claimed. For my initiation, now I am a shadow, I long for the boundaries of my wandering, and I move with the energy of your prayer, and I move in the direction of your prayer. For you are kneeling, like a bouquet in a cave of bone, behind my forehead, and I move toward a love, you have dreamed for me.