Hommage à Leonard Cohen: A Perfect Offering

Saturday, November 12

4 to 6 PM

Parc du Portugal, rue Saint-Laurent

Kathy Kennedy and the Hmmm project invited all Montrealers to share in a commemoration vigil and sing-along to celebrate the life and gifts of Leonard Cohen. We sang So Long, Marianne, Hallelujah and more. Here are my images of the afternoon along with excerpts from his work.

I heard of a man

who says words so beautifully

that if he only speaks their name

women give themselves to him...

- from Let Us Compare Mythologies, 1956

© Carolyn Marie Souaid

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.

- from Let Us Compare Mythologies, 1956

© Carolyn Marie Souaid

© Carolyn Marie Souaid

... My body once so familiar with glory, My body has become a museum: this part remembered because of someone's mouth, this because of a hand, this of wetness, this of heat. Who owns anything he has not made? With your beauty I am as uninvolved as with horses' manes and waterfalls. This is my last catalogue. I breathe the breathless I love you, I love you - and let you move forever.

- from The Spice Box of Earth, 1961

© Carolyn Marie Souaid

© Carolyn Marie Souaid

... A kite is the last poem you’ve written, so you give it to the wind, but you don’t let it go until someone finds you something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory that must be made with the sun, so make friends with the field the river and the wind, then you pray the whole cold night before, under the travelling cordless moon, to make you worthy and lyric and pure.

- from The Spice Box of Earth, 1961

© Carolyn Marie Souaid

#LeonardCohen #Marianne #Hallelujah