Slow Green Water

ELEGY

Do not look for him
In brittle mountain streams:
They are too cold for any god;
And do not examine the angry rivers
For shreds of his soft body
Or turn the shore stones for his blood;
But in the warm salt ocean
He is descending through cliffs
Of slow green water
And the hovering coloured fish
Kiss his snow-bruised body
And build their secret nests
In his fluttering winding-sheet.

Leonard Cohen, “Let Us Compare Mythologies”, 1956

**********

Dear Alex,

I was silenced last night. And not because my family was sleeping past midnight.

The reason was splayed across the first page of the first poem published in the first collection by Leonard Cohen, whose stream of consciousness lives beneath the lines we hum and moan with his strings and strains, the “Poet of Brokenness” as recalled by the Rolling Stones, never yielding to the darkness.

Cohen wrote his first book of poetry at 22 years young, an epoch of art and culture remote to me. When I was his age, the most foreign language in my spirit was poetry. I was angry more than usual but I seldom paused to “examine the angry rivers”. I read the Book of Life but resisted “descending through cliffs” or any ledge because I was too stoic to stoop. And I would have told you I loved “his snow-bruised body” with my dagger glinting to kill Him some more.

And so I re-read Cohen’s “winding-sheet” about the Resurrection. Because I was not satiated. What is his secret in poetic flutters? Where are the internal rhymes or iambic pentameters? How many syllables in a line? Why does his word fit here and not elsewhere next to another imagery? I obsessed over his secrets to unwind for myself the secret of my folly.

You see, there is no secret to writing poetry. If there were a synthesized shape or a prescribed equation, it would not encase our elastic hearts. You just cannot pin down the joy that was or sorrow that is seeping in any happening with technicolor too (sur)real. The surfeit of vulnerabilities would spill over Cohen’s ashes and ours. Too human, hellish and heaven-bound.

Yesterday I said sorry to my daughter. I was an idiot. I still am. Sometimes worse or better. No wonder I am clinging onto Cohen’s first page of broken words in the “brittle mountain streams” and “warm salt ocean”. Poetry speak truths too brittle and warm, cold and spiced, to break up and break into our mythologies.

Yours, Kate

**********

Dear Kate,

Yesterday when I was walking my dog, my neighbor came out to greet me, the man who suffered a stroke (actually two simultaneously) two winters ago.

He looked much better than what I have seen of him since his survival, and my pointing that out caused him to smile and nod but not for long hold up his right index finger to knock on his head.

"But you don't see what's inside..."

The word missing was missing.  What's no longer there, that's what he meant.

Still he was surprised by grace.  He talked to me about how he has been visiting various health care facilities in the area and the kindness he received from government-sponsored assistance even at home, grace unbeknownst to me also, until my recent volunteerism.

He continued, "But you see, people like me, or, like, all old people, they just want someone to talk to..."

That I've learned too, long suspected and now verified when serving at a care home, and my neighbor's wanting for a conversation and feeling embarrassed and probably stupid about stopping this man with a crazy dog (whom he jokingly nicknamed "tiger") to answer to his wanting touched on a few questions I've been wrestling with recently:

What is "health care"?  What is "health"?  And how do we "care" for a person's "health"?  If I ever get myself certified as a professional "health care worker," would I be empowered and emboldened to care more truly and deeply, or would I let a system run me over with everything else?  Would I spend the remains of my days worrying about what I should not say or do or be blamed for in a professional capacity?  Would I be set free to serve?  How do I touch the body that saves the soul?  "What does Christ want from us?"

Opening up a conversation is opening up a can of worms, a realm of wants, longings and frustrations.  Who wants to go there?  Who has the time when there's paper work to supply and checklists to satisfy?  We might need medical attention but we don't long for it.  A person properly cared for top to bottom might not care to live another day.  If I am struggling to stay present in what seems to be meaningless, who's there to dwell in the ash with me?

"He is descending through cliffs of slow green water..."

Are we?

Yours, Alex