they stopped me in the subway
I didn’t have my car
make it easy baby
the shit has got too hard
make it easy baby
and put my soul to rest
I’ll even say I love you
if it ain’t some kind of test
make it easy baby
don’t make the poor boy wait
those subtle
subtle invitations
that often come too late
if I had a gifted mind
if I had a gifted tongue
still I’d bitch & moan
that I didn’t have enough
that I caught too many colds
that I spent a night alone
if I were deep
if I were bright
if I could keep
the Lord in sight
if I didn’t have to ask
if I knew my human task
if I had a certain task
if I could win The Purple Heart
before the battle start
don’t condemn
anyone to death
before you’ve had
your coffee
***
To lead a private life
a lonely American marriage
a song on the charts
a house in Greece
the best of drugs
friendly with the maitre d’
in three of four good restaurants
donations to {the television picture}
of a starving child
a private life of exemplary elegance
and humanity
a vegetarian a Scientologist
a patron of the latest revolution
a private life with several ladies
and a highly dependent wife
whatever happened to my private life
whatever happened to my suit of Harris Tweed
and my long Aegean suntan
whatever happened to my place
in the Anthology of English Literature
and here we are with no one but each other
and the tear gas drifting through the trees
and here we are without a family crest
and here we are with plans to build a city
and here we are with killers in our midst
whom we love
whom we depend on
killers whom none of us can trust
and it’s late and it’s early
as all the experts say
and all of us are amateurs
in what we do today
whatever happened to the private life
the poets and the singers promised me
To lead a private life
like a pirate with his knife
***
Paris March 1969
If Kenneth Koch wasn’t so funny
he’d have to carry a gun
because he steals men’s wives
and what is worse
gives them back
complete with assorted old jokes
he tried to prevent me
from discovering the whereabouts
of Terry Southern’s ex-wife
but conscience drove him
to phone up the next day
and apologize
actually I phoned him
and he apologized in passing
I could have waited a long time
for that phone-call
***
Travelogue
the {beefy} burghers of Montreal
elude a humpty-dumpty fall
by climbing not a single wall
or hill or steps or stairs at all
the stables of the King are bare
and his soldiers couldn’t care—
the beefy burghers do not dare
to risk eternal disrepair
they did not hear me when I fell
and fractured all my mortal shell
flutes of bone, fine flutes to sell
a skull that rattles like a bell
***
to the young let me say:
I am not sage, rebbe, roshi, guru
I am Bad Example.
to experienced persons
who have characterized my life work
as cheap, superficial, pretentious, insignificant:
you do not know
how Right you are
among the whores
there are some of us
who want to make love well
and among {those} these
a few
who do it for nothing
I am a whore
and a junkie.
if some of my songs
made a moment
easier for you,
please remember this.
***
I loved you. I envied you. I thought I had a
right to your company. When that time came I
wasted it in tales of strength and boasting. Your
lovely light has guided me so long.
Sometimes the light of a firefly, sometimes the light of a furnace.
***
and when the ordeal
that you know and you feel
is truly refined and upheld
we’ll meet in the house
that’s prepared for the spouse
of the widowed lord
of us all
***
I saw her comb her long black hair
and then I loved her jealously
I broke my life in two for her
and she’s no good for me
Her {full moon} breasts
tipped rosy red
O God I love her jealously
She burns my heart she warms my bed
& she’s no good for me
***
We go down to the café
on Mount Royal
where they have the records of home
and we spend our quarters to hear
the songs that were born in the sun
and we dance with a twisted handkerchief
through the long nights of snow
and for all the sweet time that a song can last
back to the islands we go
and soon they turn the juke-box off
and there’s only five of us left
and we’re done with the talking of politics
and the beer is up to our necks
we sing like we sang on the island
when we’d sail up the moonlit steps
and if you could look through the blizzard
you’d see the blood on our lips
Don’t forget me Demetra
Don’t forget what you know
I’ll be coming back with the money
in fifteen years or so
***
Karen’s beauty is very great
it lies on her heart like a paperweight
She haunts the edges of her beauty
like a ghost on sentry duty
If beauty is the motherland
she lives on the furthest strand
Her back toward the Capitol
that the pilgrims call so beautiful
She hears them make a joyous sound
but she cannot turn around
The lover’s song and the victim’s rack
they soar and creak behind her back
Through her beauty many pass
like penitents on broken glass
But once inside there is no cure
for hearts so wounded at the door
Trying to find a place to kneel
between the poets of pain
Trying to find a world to feel
that feels like the world again
My darling says her love is real
then why does she complain
***
You talk about telling me the truth and then you threaten to write all over my book of poems. Let us put an end to this chatter.
&nb
sp; You expressed some curiosity as to whether I would love you or kill you in response to one of your gestures. I am neither a saint nor a murderer: I do not love and I do not kill. I make love and I tear the wings off flies
***
One more drink
for the boys at the bar
I’d tell you all about us
but I don’t know who we are
One more cry
from the pedal steel guitar
for the war that we lost
for the girl that we wanted
for the man that we double-crossed
all day at the office
for the scout from the major league
who’s never gonna spot ya
Get em up, Joe,
like you did for Frank Sinatra
***
August 2, 1976
I stole your sister for a little ritual that failed
I stole your savior with his hands so firmly nailed
I stole the crescent moon its image in the sea
I stole your roses and your lapis lazuli
I stole the bullets made of silver and your gun
I stole your many gods, I stole the only one
I stole the tower with a woman leaning there
I stole your lover from the ladder of her hair
I crossed the line of reason
I stole your victory handout
and your flimsy Holocaust
I stole the midnight special from the trash
So go to sleep, it’s never coming back
I stole your former wife, I had to tell her why
you kept on coming back to say goodbye
I crossed a moat, a high electric fence
I stole your Jews and Gypsies tangled from the trench {tangled in a trench}
I stole your victim [?] memory your holocaust
I have stolen everything you lost
***
For I have been thru many lives
& no one follows me
I am what you were last night
& I am what you’ll be
The moment that you track me down
I surrender there
I leave you with a bag of cracks
that you know you must repair
***
You came to me
You wear your widow clothes
I ask who are you mourning for
you say, The man you were before
The man you were before
I loved you
I remember him
Didn’t he live
on an island in
the Mediterranean sea
with a mandate from God
to enter the dark
Acceptance Address for the Prince of Asturias Award
October 21, 2011
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Members of the Jury, Distinguished Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is a great honor to stand here before you tonight. Perhaps, like the great maestro Riccardo Muti, I am not used to standing in front of an audience without an orchestra behind me, but I will do my best as a solo artist tonight.
I stayed up all night last night wondering what I might say to this august assembly. And after I had eaten all the chocolate bars and peanuts in the mini-bar, I scribbled a few words. I don’t think I have to refer to them. Obviously, I am deeply touched to be recognized by the Foundation. But I’ve come here tonight to express another dimension of gratitude. I think I can do it in three or four minutes—and I will try.
When I was packing in Los Angeles to come here, I had a sense of unease because I’ve always felt some ambiguity about an award for poetry. Poetry comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers. So I feel somewhat like a charlatan to accept an award for an activity which I do not command. In other words, if I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.
I was compelled in the midst of that ordeal of packing to go and open my guitar. I have a Conde guitar, which was made in Spain in the great workshop at Number 7 Gravina Street; a beautiful instrument that I acquired over 40 years ago. I took it out of the case and I lifted it. It seemed to be filled with helium—it was so light. And I brought it to my face. I put my face close to the beautifully designed rosette, and I inhaled the fragrance of the living wood. You know that wood never dies.
I inhaled the fragrance of cedar as fresh as the first day that I acquired the guitar. And a voice seemed to say to me, “You are an old man and you have not said thank you; you have not brought your gratitude back to the soil from which this fragrance arose.” And so I come here tonight to thank the soil and the soul of this people that has given me so much—because I know just as an identity card is not a man, a credit rating is not a country. Now, you know of my deep association and confraternity with the poet Federico García Lorca. I could say that when I was a young man, an adolescent, and I hungered for a voice, I studied the English poets and I knew their work well, and I copied their styles, but I could not find a voice. It was only when I read, even in translation, the works of Lorca that I understood that there was a voice. It is not that I copied his voice; I would not dare. But he gave me permission to find a voice, to locate a voice; that is, to locate a self, a self that is not fixed, a self that struggles for its own existence.
And as I grew older I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.
And so I had a voice, but I did not have an instrument. I did not have a song.
And now I’m going to tell you very briefly a story of how I got my song.
Because I was an indifferent guitar player. I banged the chords. I only knew a few of them. I sat around with my college friends, drinking and singing the folk songs, or the popular songs of the day, but I never in a thousand years thought of myself as a musician or as a singer.
One day in the early ’60s, I was visiting my mother’s house in Montreal. The house is beside a park, and in the park there’s a tennis court where many people come to watch the beautiful young tennis players enjoy their sport. I wandered back to this park, which I’d known since my childhood, and there was a young man playing a guitar. He was playing a flamenco guitar, and he was surrounded by two or three girls and boys who were listening to him. I loved the way he played. There was something about the way he played that captured me.
It was the way I wanted to play—and knew that I would never be able to play.
And I sat there with the other listeners for a few moments, and when there was a silence, an appropriate silence, I asked him if he would give me guitar lessons. He was a young man from Spain, and we could only communicate in my broken French and his broken French. He didn’t speak English. And he agreed to give me guitar lessons. I pointed to my mother’s house, which you could see from the tennis court, and we made an appointment; we settled the price.
And he came to my mother’s house the next day and he said, “Let me hear you play something.” I tried to play something. He said, “You don’t know how to play, do you?” I said, “No, I really don’t know how to play.” He said, “First of all, let me tune your guitar. It’s all out of tune.” So he took the guitar, and he tuned it. He said, “It’s not a bad guitar.” It wasn’t the Conde, but it wasn’t a bad guitar. So he handed it back to me. He said, “Now play.”
I couldn’t play any better.
He said, “Let me show you some chords.” And he took the guitar and he produced a sound from the guitar that I’d never heard. And he played a sequence of chords with a tremolo, and he said, “Now you do it.” I said, “It’s out of the question. I can’t possibly do it.” He said, “Let me put your fingers on the frets.” And he put my fingers on the frets. And he said, “Now, now play.” It was a mess. He said, “I’ll come back tomorrow.” He came back tomorrow. He put my hands
on the guitar. He placed it on my lap in the way that was appropriate, and I began again with those six chords—[the] six-chord progression that many, many flamenco songs are based on.
I was a little better that day.
The third day: improved, somewhat improved. But I knew the chords now. And I knew that although I couldn’t coordinate my fingers with my thumb to produce the correct tremolo pattern, I knew the chords—I knew them very, very well by this point. The next day, he didn’t come. He didn’t come. I had the number of his boarding house in Montreal. I phoned to find out why he had missed the appointment, and they told me that he’d taken his life—that he committed suicide. I knew nothing about the man. I did not know what part of Spain he came from. I did not know why he came to Montreal. I did not know why he stayed there. I did not know why he appeared there in that tennis court. I did not know why he took his life. I was deeply saddened, of course.
But now I disclose something that I’ve never spoken in public. It was those six chords—it was that guitar pattern that has been the basis of all my songs and all my music.
So now you will begin to understand the dimensions of the gratitude I have for this country. Everything that you have found favorable in my work comes from this place.
Everything, everything that you have found favorable in my songs and my poetry is inspired by this soil.
So I thank you so much for the warm hospitality that you have shown my work, because it is really yours, and you have allowed me to affix my signature to the bottom of the page.
Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Leonard did not provide acknowledgements for The Flame, which is a minor tragedy, as the duty of fulfilling this obligation falls on me, and I am wholly inadequate to the task. The acknowledgements to Book of Longing demonstrate the importance which Leonard assigned to this page. Leonard’s humility was genuine, and his gratitude unmistakable. He would have been concerned about possible hurt feelings by anyone who felt overlooked, notwithstanding the inherent limitations in this exercise. That said, I am guided by simplicity.
Leonard would have thanked Robert Faggen for his friendship and editorial efforts during the long process of assembling The Flame from Leonard’s extensive archive. Leonard would also have thanked Alexandra Pleshoyano, whom he first met in 2010, for her scholarly expertise and meticulous attention to detail in the final editing of the manuscript. He would also have thanked Jared Bland at McClelland and Stewart; Ileene Smith and Jonathan Galassi at Farrar, Straus and Giroux; and Francis Bickmore at Canongate for their commitment to the book, and his friend Leon Wieseltier for reading the final manuscript. He would also want me to thank his new agent, Andrew Wylie, for his efforts with this manuscript and for his work on the back catalogue.
The Flame Page 14