Poetry is just the evidence of life.
If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~ Leonard Cohen
It burns intense, and it also burns slow -
great heat, a sheer blue flame, finely haloed
but it yields nothing, no ash, minimal glow
and there’s no charred heap once it’s out, no broad
smear on soil from which meanings can be clawed.
Yes, it’s poetry, that tiny rimmed blue leap,
that transparent smoke with its musky smell
though it leaves no trace of itself in the sweep
of its own wide dispersal. Hard to tell,
to tease out the proof that it’s burning well.
Because that quote from Cohen just took my brain in its jaws this morning and worried it like a big cat with its prey.
