Sharon Robinson – Alexandra Leaving
You’ve [almost] [possibly] never been.
To a moment where you whisper to “Yours, L. Cohen” through drizzly air; whispers of wishes for further days and contentment for each and every candle whip of light that remain.
“I don’t know when I’ll be around these parts [“Yeats’ county”] again.”
He wouldn’t allow us to set our own tone, our own world – he forced the question, the thought: the chance of adjoining edges to his lifes frame. The concluding paragraph. The finishing touches.
“Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn – I have torn everyone who reached out for me.”
The gut wrings with prudish rejection when it hears something so crass, something lost in the plain sight of previous visits and views and listens. You see, for the most part, I see Cohen as a comic. Not meant as a negative: he grasps at irony and dangles brimming tales in front of us to toss and devour whole, but then there’s true tragedy – and until now the tragedy of Bird On A Wire, that specific line, such tragedy was lost to me.
“The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both,
Beautiful, one a gazelle.”
When he smiles, we do. Keyboard skills [basic notes on Tower Of Song] met with claps and bellows of reverence and veneration. Cohen’s rebuttal? “Thank you, music fans.” A world in cahoots could author no line so love inducing.
There were a few sporadic seats untouched. Still some who don’t [won’t ever] get it.
[Everybody knows you and me and the things we do.]