Darker Than Silence
(For Leonard Cohen)
Autumn leaves sing in khaki demise
wasting no time in the crimson-stained snow,
lying in smoke-berry and fading rickshaw sleepiness,
with violin and violent Hallelujah’s -
Winter cries
along with the bird on my windowsill
on cold steely silent nights
in wingless speckled September.
Flowers all laid to rest
in rasping acoustic nylon songs
bemoaning the lateness of the rising sun
and eagerness of the moon
in lurking jack-in-the-box premature explosions.
Inherited deep-rooted seeds of genius
in David’s boldness,
and Solomon’s songs and wisdom -
which you planted in hearts
across Montreal
and New York
and Jerusalem
and in the bone-chilling, home-hitting
single bedroom flat on the basement of table mountain,
in Cape Town.
The pillars came crashing down
and wakening to a blaze
of bone-marrow blasts
that shot from hell through blood prison cells
into pine caskets of eternal maple,
where kings don’t sit on broken thrones -
your word’s are an eternal victory march
plastered on the guiding mast of these
glass shattered times -
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah.
The flowers will begin to bud in spring
with promises flowing out of bird beak sing songs,
rising to new heights, forever,
until the end -
for new origins on hotel kitchen chairs
right through;
to the blossoming land of resurrection
vibrating on unheard harp strings,
louder,
and louder we will sing again -
Hallelujah!
