You chant again the telling charm
Today, on the anniversary of Leonard Cohen’s death I am reposting the poem I composed for him last year.
King David is the archetypal sacred singer, the psalmist in whom and through whom every passion can be lifted into poetry, and lifted through that poetry to God. His psalms sound Praise and Lament together, the wounds and glories of Eros and the wounds and glories of Agape. It has often seemed to me that Leonard Cohen was a latter day David, as he too addressed the Lord and said
‘From this broken hill,
all your praises they shall ring
if it be your will
to let me sing.
I composed this poem about his passing in the mediaeval Rondeau form. The Rondeau is also the form used in the poem In Flanders Field and it seems a fitting form for this occasion. As always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the title or the play button.
This poem, originally posted on this blog last year, was published in February of this year in The Christian Century.
Like David’s psalm you named our pain,
And left us. But the songs remain
To search our wounds and bring us balm,
Till every song becomes a psalm,
And your restraint is our refrain;
Between the stained-glass and the stain,
The dark heart and the open vein,
Between the heart-storm and the harm,
Like David’s psalm.
I see you by the windowpane,
Alive within your own domain,
The light is strong, the seas are calm,
You chant again the telling charm,
That names, and naming, heals our pain,
Like David’s psalm.
Malcolm Guite 