" Leonard Cohen’s Last Night "
I remember when I met you
at the hospital. Your arm slung in plaster,
like a twisted wing; your famous
blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder-
ripped too-wide, like a smile hiding grief.
Before that night, I had wandered Greece
for seven years. Lost, inculpable, and free
to love recklessly,
In cities and in forests,
I tasted a thousand women.
God was just a punchline then --
But I thought of Jesus as a sailor,
walking upon the water, flexing
burlap arms, an inviting beard,
a gypsy smile that knew things.
Such a beautiful loser,
but with a sad ending that I
couldn’t use. No use for
those long last days spent watching
from a lonely wooden tower-
so I moved from one darkened door
to the next, and at each stop there would be
a pretty lady leaning there,
like the red slash across the swell
of a bluebottled wound.
Once, on the island of Hydra,
a young girl asked me
to take a candle to her hand; So I did it,
and found out when skin blisters
it looks like insects hatching.
Then the time I met a married woman
in the pocket of a low motel. She was lying
still as glass, in a bathtub of clinking ice --
I carried her dripping to the bed, she told me
to treat her like a corpse, and I did not refuse.
And now you stand here with piano wire
lashed across your hands; they look like
trapped birds, whispering a request
that I can’t look in the face. And I know
you must be confused, but this time
I won’t drag your name through thorns
to see what color the blood will be; I will
build around your body with carpentry,
and in the strong solace of those walls
we will fix each other whole.
© 2003 Graeme Mullen
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