"They're moving us tomorrow"

What really shakes down is the tension between
Manhattan and Berlin. (Btw, the reference is to the
Manhattan Project in my poem.)

I really enjoyed this and admire the sheer number of
titles you work into it.

Candice


--- Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> HI Candice
> 
> thanks. he sure do seem to catch others'
> imaginations, dont he?
> 
> I'll send you the other one, it's also in Breath
> Takes, but it is long, 
> written originally for a festschrift for his 60th. I
> played a numbers 
> game on the lyrics of a song Im sure you'll
> recognize as you read on...
> 
> Doug
> On 5-Jul-07, at 10:38 AM, MC Ward wrote:
> 
> > Thanks so much for this fascinating piece--prose,
> > prose poem, and poem all in one. Your responses
> always
> > tend to be generous and to the point. More on
> Cohen by
> > you (bayou?) would suit me fine. What's the one
> that's
> > far too long got to say? Maybe you could send me a
> > photocopy instead of spending hours at the
> > keyboard(?).
> >
> > Thanks again,
> > Candice
> 
> History: Manhattan - Montréal - Berlin
> 						For Leonard Cohen
> 
> 
> 
> 
> They had sentenced him. Me also, to over twenty long
> years. But of 
> what. Boredom is for others, trying not to notice
> change. In the broken 
> system, shift from without within. But I'm not
> coming not now no I'm 
> changing 'coming' around to a reward for them. The
> first cocktail we 
> could take: a Manhattan. Drunk then and we could
> take anything. Berlin 
> perhaps.
> 
> 
> I'm through being guided. Poems are by the way. A
> song is signal 
> enough, and in those days the stairway to heavens.
> You say I'm not only 
> guided but it's by the text. This heretofore
> unacknowledged birthmark 
> is language on parole. Remember: my razor cut skin.
> But now I'm a 
> sucker guided through labyrinths by monks offering
> the revelation of 
> beauty in and of itself. Let our politicians sell
> weapons. Let the 
> first be last. We know that. Take off for Manhattan;
> sing loud then 
> sing soft. We hear you take chances in Berlin.
> 
> 
> I'd reread the novel. Really. Often, because I like
> it, a desire to 
> learn how to live I guess. Something beside that?
> Well, theres you, 
> that mystique, and baby, all the time I wondered.
> Talk about love; we 
> talk about your version, how the body is part of and
> yet not it, your 
> insistence on the spirit all dressed up and in there
> wearing your old 
> and new clothes worn inside out. But someone might
> ask you if you can 
> see something out beyond that horizon or coast line
> beyond its being 
> there. You just keep moving across streets and
> through corridors down 
> into the bowels of the station of the cross. I lost
> you but told them I 
> saw you. Then much later I changed my story told
> someone else but you 
> had disappeared so I went underground. Who told them
> that. Or you. But 
> the photograph I took: that you was perfect and
> changed. One or one 
> more of the records. Yeah, those.
> 
> You sang from the tower , loved all audiences
> equally, even me it 
> seemed. It was as good a time as a song written for
> a loser could 
> provide. Thats true but not fact and even now it
> matters more that 
> youre putting body in music, worried about the
> changing voice that 
> charted how you and I and everyone were aging just
> as predicted. It 
> wasnt might alone would help you win. Whether weak
> or strong you sing 
> deep and you know your casements open on the view of
> a forlorn way the 
> tower throws shadows to the far horizon to stop the
> music. Lucky for me 
> that didnt stop you. But when will democracy arrive.
> You preach or 
> sing. I dont see the cracks I have to find. You
> found the way, but with 
> what discipline. I want to know how, but the music,
> the many 
> instruments combining, all these nights of joy. It's
> what I wanted, 
> everything we ever prayed for; and even so this
> music isnt quite enough 
> to change the world. We let it be again. Oh my, it
> will be hard work to 
> shift the paradigm. Begin at the beginning, the
> first thing to do is we 
> look for the light, take chances. Here or in
> Manhattan. Ive been there 
> too. Then becomes now there if we betray ourselves.
> This time take 
> Luftansa's overnight flight to Berlin.
> 
> 
> I passed through once by train, dont know anything
> first hand. You like 
> it there I bet, and your audience loved you, youre
> in fashion always in 
> Europe, it's less business than art, aint that right
> mister. Here they 
> understand what the I in your songs is saying. Dont
> they. Yet what they 
> really like is your romantic aura, all these signs
> of wild living, even 
> drugs perhaps, experience anyway, a luck that we (Im
> there too) cant 
> keep ourselves from envying. Even when you meditate,
> spiritual, or 
> loving, a thin man in black you sing. I listen in
> the dark and dont 
> mind. There is something to like in your strange
> integrity, it's what 
> keeps us listening, reading. It happened that like
> some I came to you 
> through books. That was my way; it still is. My
> sister heard you 
> singing on her first record. I dont know why we gave
> it to her. But 
> take that for what it's worth. Manhattan has the
> best record stores. 
> Then it did anyway. But now we can buy your music
> anywhere, take your 
> music anywhere. Even to Berlin.
> And if only the books traveled as I do, that
> easily. How we would 
> thank transnationals if only they cared for you
> enough to care for 
> literacy too. For they own the airwaves and all
> those other 
> technologies; so books are superfluous items in the
> global marketplace, 
> even yours that dig deeper into the crack that you
> have always sung 
> about casually. I sent for each book; they all sent
> me elsewhere, 
> looking for cracks and light. The indeterminacy
> principle at work: I 
> couldnt monkey with the universe while standing
> apart and observing it. 
> It always gets away. The cracks are everywhere,
> jagged lightning on 
> plywood like Paterson Ewen's. I listen to violin or
> saxophone when I 
> write and I suspect you have; while the painter
> practiced listening to 
> like sounds. I think every body dances to some music
> now. Night and day 
> she stands before you and, amused and naked, waits
> for the now of eyes 
> widening to the brightness. I'm here she says now
> are you ready. Down 
> on your knees, thats the first gesture. Now look in
> the cracks. We have 
> to do this together, lets take our time. You find
> them in Manhattan, in 
> Montréal, even in that monastery. Then once more,
> over and over again 
> we learn the first lesson: what to take with us, on
> our way to Berlin.
> 
> 
> Remember, thats the key, you used to be me or
> somebody when you read or 
> sang I understood you were talking to me. I used to
> believe in 
> intimacy, something you gave to all of us, audience
> as I, to live in 
> 
=== message truncated ===



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