Suzanne by Leonard Cohen [Archive]

RonPrice

Aug 2, 2006, 04:55 AM

I first heard a Cohen song in 1966 in southern Ontario and last night I saw him in an interview on Australian television--it was 40 years. A few hours later I wrote the following prose-poem in appreciation for his music and taking a personal pleasure in the relief he has got in recent years from depression. Having suffered myself from this dark force, I left like a strange, a distant, but a spirituallly close-brother to this man.-Ron Price, Tasmania.
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COHEN’S SHISH KEBAB

After finishing my writing and reading last night it was a little after 2 a.m. I went downstairs and turned on the TV to rest my eyes and brain before going to bed. I was surprised to see Leonard Cohen in an interview on one of the Australian TV stations.1 The interview inspired me that same afternoon to read about Cohen on the internet. The material here comes from several interview sites.2 “I feel tremendously relieved,” said Cohen in 2005 at the age of 70, “that I’m not worried about my happiness. There are things of course that make me happy…..But what I am so happy about is that the background of distress and discomfort I had had in my life has at last evaporated. It’s not that I don’t feel distressed or sad about things that I see and know and what happens to people around me. It’s not that the emotions don’t come, it’s just that the background is clear. Before…it was very dark. I could pierce the darkness. Before…..there was a kind of mist, a kind of distress over everything, but that has lifted at last. –Ron Price with thanks to 1Leonard Cohen, Interview with Leonard Cohen, August 2nd 2006, 2:00-3:00 A.M. TV; and “An Interview in 2005,” Kari Hesthamar, Los Angeles, 2005.

You’ve been writing poetry
as long as my life’s been
associated with the permeation
of that light, with that most
wonderful and thrilling motion
with the very inception of the
Kingdom of God on earth
when the manifest Standard
began waving in the centre
of the great continent where
we were born and raised.

It’s been a heavy trip for you,
Leonard, and I’m so pleased
your distress and discomfort
has evaporated at last—me too,
Leonard, me too: at last a lifting,
an ease,a tranquillity never known,
forgiveness and an early peach
with all labour put away---well,
not quite all, eh Leonard, eh?---
the heart still cooks, sizzling like,
how did you put it—shish kebab?

Ron Price
August 2nd 2006