(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.
Also sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #196: Hello Fall! Strictly speaking, this is off-prompt, but the winding down at the end of a life can be considered autumnal.
