This wonderful video is a speech that Leonard Cohen gave after receiving the Prince of Asturias Poetry prize.
POEM: Elegy For Iris And John
Elegy For Iris And John
nothing ever deeply felt
can ever disappear
the week the month
the stately year
are but counters in a game
that must ever end the same
POEM: The Truth
The Truth
is beautiful
because it is true
no smear of color
no music
the particularity of pain
the authenticity of grief
a Sicilian quarry
at high noon
bedrock
POEM: The Desert Sun
The Desert Sun
1.
blinded by the desert sun
the Hebrew prophets
divined in darkness
a beauty deeper
than had been known
2.
an old retainer
of Charles The First
asked to defect
to Cromwell’s side
replied as follows
I have eaten
the king’s bread
for thirty years
I will not desert him
in his hour of need
3.
the beauty of the moral act
POEM: Proust
Proust
the only paradise
according to Proust
is paradise lost
perhaps so
but one can always
read Proust
POEM: The Sport of Kings (with apologies to Hemingway)
The Sport Of Kings
(with apologies to Hemingway)
I was fucking
a good-looking kid
from Baltimore
whose uncle owned
a great horse
(Spectacular Bid)
feeling like family
I rooted him home
to win the Derby
two weeks later
it was the Preakness
when he lost the Belmont
I felt like shit
then the kid
takes off for Maryland
when she gets back
it’s not the same
I don’t know
sometimes it seems
they don’t leave
a guy nothin’
POEM: Laura
Laura
someone
Lorca I think
said that a poem
should be like
a knife in the heart
Laura
beautiful girl
pulse of my blood
I am that heart
you are the poem
