Preface To A Tribute To Leonard Cohen: Another Poet Entirely

Because of Leonard Cohen, I found my way to Federico García Lorca.  Leonard Cohen has a song on I'm Your Man called "Take This Waltz" which is a translation/reimagining of a Lorca poem called "Little Viennese Waltz."  It's a gorgeous song, so unusual in the pop idiom, with pure poetry bursting from its lines:

In Vienna there are ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die

It's hard to imagine even our most poetical of musicians getting away with such lush imagery.

Cohen named his daughter Lorca.  That's a beautiful name.

At some point in the early nineties, I got to see a Lorca play being performed.  I believe it was Yerma, & it was eye-opening & jaw-dropping to hear the lines of the play - so poetic - being recited by actors.  It's the same epiphany one feels when one sees Shakespeare performed for the first time, especially after having been forced to read it for a class.  Poems were meant to be sung, I believe.

Why, in general, aren't they?

After that time, I would pepper Lorca lines in letters & emails I wrote to women I was courting.  Here's one:

Like a snake, my heart
has shed its skin.
I hold it here in my hands,
full of honey and wounds.

Here's another:

Only your hot heart,

nothing more.

& one more:

The guitar

makes dreams cry.

The sobbing

of lost souls

escapes

its round mouth.

& like the tarantula

it weaves a great star

to ensnare sighs floating

in its black

cistern of wood.

That last one, called "Six Strings," was one I'm sure Leonard Cohen knew intimately.

Gosh, it would have been nice to have a conversation with him once in my life.  I'll have to live for the rest of my life with all the conversations I've had & will continue to have with the beautiful music he made.