Poem
about Marianna
Beneath my hands
Your small breasts
Are the upturned
bellies
Of breathing, fallen
sparrows.
Whenever you move
I hear the sounds of
closing wings,
Of falling wings.
I am speechless
because you have
fallen beside me,
Because your
eyelashes
Are the spines
Of tiny fragile
animals.
I dread the time
When your mouth
begins to call me hunter.
My
Mind, My Mind, My Mind
- My mind
- seems to go out
- On a path,
- The width of a
thread,
- And of endless
length.
- A thread that is
the same color as the night.
- Out,
- Out along the
narrow highway
- Sails my mind,
- Driven by
curiosity,
- Luminous with
acceptance.
- Far and out,
- Like a feathered
hook,
- Whipped deep above
the light of the stream
- By a magnificent
cast.
- Somewhere out of my
reach
- The hook unbends
into a spear,
- The spear shears
itself into a needle,
- And the needle sows
the world together.
- It sows skin on a
skeleton
- And liptick on a
lip.
- It sows scarves to
mountains--
- It goes through
everything
- like a relentless
bloodstream.
-
- And the tunnel is
filled
- with a comforting
message:
- a beautiful
knowledge of unity.
- All the disparates
of the world:
- The different wings
of the paradox,
- Coin faces of
problem,
- Petal pulling
questions,
- Scissor shaped
conscience,
- All the polarities,
- Things in their
images,
- and things which
cast no shadow,
- And just the
everyday explosions on a street;
- This face and that;
- A house and a
toothache,
- Explosions which
merely have different letters in their names--
- My needle pierces
it all.
- And I myself,
- My greedy
fantasies,
- Everything which
has existed
- and does exist:
- We are part of a
necklace of incomparable beauty
- and unmeaning.
Leonard Cohen
circa 1965
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