Friday 22 December 2017

Song of Light (glosa on Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah

I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this

“Hallelujah,” Leonard Cohen 


If lust in moonlight defies the laws of day
look again for another clue, the King
or Satan but not the youthful body made
to incubate the seed and turn it into
another King. Love is the bringer of life
and the question lies in the way we award
each birth its sacred crown, its milk
and meat, its breath and water
required to live. What can we afford?
I’ve heard there was a secret chord.


Went bathing too in someone’s pool
in a pink bikini, new, and pale as innocence,
with a giggle of girls unaware
of longing, we shivered out of water
to hug the man who wrapped his towel
around us, his smile was warm and broad
ubiquitous as the sun and the skin’s pleasure
to tender and warm the pumping heart
sweet melodies come to fate’s sharp sword
that David played, and it pleased the Lord.


But is that nature’s fault or our weak link
in organizing wars and tribal laws
we plunge into control, the hardware
of our thoughts, forgetting the power
and urgency of that which we can’t prove
or fix with science, or muddle through
the built in failure to close the womb
to see at last that pleasure is the gift
we crave, the ocean wave the loyal blue.
But you don’t really care for music, do you?


Ecclesiastes’ song of sighs like time alone
pulls the tide, and moon on water
softly bathes the night in soothing rhythm.
After bloodshed takes its toll, our purpose
under heaven rocks the crib to climax gentle
pleasures shooting stars to simple bliss.
Then fearful minds begin their work
to legislate possession of the universal seed
and make desire a trap, a prison, forbidden kiss.
It goes like this.

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