It Gave No Cause

(Elegy for Leonard Cohen)

The end came 

with a fall in the night:

sudden, unexpected, 

peaceful.

Busy growing frail, 

working diligently,

he felt the window 

getting narrower.

His working pace was slow,

polishing for many years.

A new set of tracks

the morning he died:

spiritual wisdom;

dark, self-effacing wit.

( ... after the event,

not to know ... )

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Twenty-Nine. 

Prompt: to write a poem that takes its inspiration from the life of a musician, poet, or other artist. This is a found poem, in the form of an erasure of the article, 'For Leonard Cohen, the End Came With a Fall in the Night' by Ben Sisario, published in The New York Times, Nov. 16 2016.

Rather than 'find' and string together single words in a sea of erasures, I've used whole phrases from the text – though in a way that sometimes subtly alters fine shades of meaning.