Dikt#4

Today, Leonard Cohen. My beloved Leonard Cohen. True beauty and fragility. Thought and love and hurt. And longing.

~

I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when I look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.

~

I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how I kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy, as though I'd
never been your lover.

~

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.

Wherever 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.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.

I want them
to surrender before you
the trembling rhyme of your face
from their deep caskets.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want my body and my hands
to be pools
for your looking and laughing.

~

I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.

If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips,
it is because I hear a man climb the stairs and clear his throat outside our door.

~

My lady can sleep
upon a handkerchief
or if it be Fall
upon a fallen leaf.

I have seen the hunters
kneel before her hem
even in her sleep
she turns away from them.

The only gift they offer
is their abiding grief
I pull out my pockets
for a handkerchief or leaf.

~

I long to hold some lady
for my love is far away,
and will not come tomorrow
and was not here today.

There is no flesh so perfect
as on my lady's bone,
and yet it seems so distant
when I am all alone:

As though she were a masterpiece
in some castled town,
that pilgrims come to visit
and priests to copy down.

Alas, I cannot travel
to a love I have so deep
or sleep too close beside
a love I want to keep.

But I long to hold some lady,
for flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
each night beside my feet.

~

I perceived the outline of your breasts
through your Hallowe'en costume
I knew you were falling in love with me
because no other man could perceive
the advance of your bosom into his imagination
It was a rupture of your unusual modesty
for me and me alone
through which you impressed upon my shapeless hunger
the incomparable and final outline of your breasts
like two deep fossil shells
which remained all night long and probably forever.

~

I can hold in a great deal; I don’t speak
until the waters overflow their banks
and break through the dam.