Re: Leonard Has Passed Away
Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2016 10:39 pm
Dear friends,
I'm very sad for us all. I've been a member for a long time but have not posted for awhile but need to express my sadness at Leonard's passing. It's with a strange feeling of loss, incomparable for someone I've never met.
Thinking of Leonard's influence I go back to his own recollection of discovering Lorca, when, in the darkness of a bookstore in Montreal, his heart was opened by the line, "I want to pass through the arches of Elvira, to see your thighs and begin weeping" Similarly, in what seems another lifetime, I received a tape by post from my brother, songs of love and hate, where each song was a pathway, a chamber door, a connection with a secret life I didn't know existed but was instantly familiar. I went about the dark streets of London through what seemed an endless winter, as Frank O'hara might say 'with my heart in my pocket', in this case a book of poems, stranger music, walking amongst the damp faceless crowds, shuffling into the light of the underground station listening, "New York is cold, but I like where I'm living / there's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.”
Later there was more space and solitude. On a balcony in Greece I recall staying awake whilst my wife slept drinking mastika in the company of a stray dog and reading to the light of the moon, " Silence and a deeper silence when the crickets hesitate." There were many occasions such as this.
Any ideas of revolution I had were settled with an office job. I listened to In My Secret Life and read the Outsider, hearing the existential voice of I Can't Forget thinking it was the only politics going.
Years later I finally saw him in a theatre in Manchester. With a head full of red wine, witnessing him kneel beside a Spanish guitar was like watching a dream back I'd imagined man times. It moved me in a manner I couldn't verbalize. There was a sense of going home.
I once did dream of meeting Leonard. He sat across from me at a wooden table which he carved his initials into as I read him my poems. I couldn't hear his words but I knew I didn't have to be afraid as most people are when they meet their heroes. Part of me thought one day I might meet him but I never did.
Rarely a week goes by that I don't listen to his songs. To hear new words last week, driving home on roads I know well, turning corners in darkness, I was thinking of the reviews that said it was an end, a culmination of a life but I felt only excitement and a sense of renewal to hear new words from that voice, " Steer your heart past the Truth you believed in yesterday"
Now a baby is due early next year and life is changing again and my wife and I have discussed calling him Leonard - even though we already gave the cat that name. The cat is sat beside me now. He has that beautiful other worldliness and deep familiarity that all cats do and is at the heart of good poetry.
I'm reading all the beautiful thoughts people have given following Leonard’s passing and then Leonard's thoughts of Lorca, "I've never left that world. I stand here tonight and I invite you all to join me here. There's lots of space, there's no boundaries, there's no politics, no language. All you have to do is celebrate the sunlight coming through the hair of your beloved. It's a simple thing."
I live and linger in the space of Leonard's invitation. He shone through a world of static. He was a lighthouse keeper. He did the hard work and once again has gone before us. I'm so thankful to have known his work. Where he goes now I have no thoughts but know he is better placed than most of us to find his way.
My deepest condolences to his family and to all the people here and my thanks to Jarkko, Allan and all the others who have kept Leonard's work alive and continue to do so.
I'm very sad for us all. I've been a member for a long time but have not posted for awhile but need to express my sadness at Leonard's passing. It's with a strange feeling of loss, incomparable for someone I've never met.
Thinking of Leonard's influence I go back to his own recollection of discovering Lorca, when, in the darkness of a bookstore in Montreal, his heart was opened by the line, "I want to pass through the arches of Elvira, to see your thighs and begin weeping" Similarly, in what seems another lifetime, I received a tape by post from my brother, songs of love and hate, where each song was a pathway, a chamber door, a connection with a secret life I didn't know existed but was instantly familiar. I went about the dark streets of London through what seemed an endless winter, as Frank O'hara might say 'with my heart in my pocket', in this case a book of poems, stranger music, walking amongst the damp faceless crowds, shuffling into the light of the underground station listening, "New York is cold, but I like where I'm living / there's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.”
Later there was more space and solitude. On a balcony in Greece I recall staying awake whilst my wife slept drinking mastika in the company of a stray dog and reading to the light of the moon, " Silence and a deeper silence when the crickets hesitate." There were many occasions such as this.
Any ideas of revolution I had were settled with an office job. I listened to In My Secret Life and read the Outsider, hearing the existential voice of I Can't Forget thinking it was the only politics going.
Years later I finally saw him in a theatre in Manchester. With a head full of red wine, witnessing him kneel beside a Spanish guitar was like watching a dream back I'd imagined man times. It moved me in a manner I couldn't verbalize. There was a sense of going home.
I once did dream of meeting Leonard. He sat across from me at a wooden table which he carved his initials into as I read him my poems. I couldn't hear his words but I knew I didn't have to be afraid as most people are when they meet their heroes. Part of me thought one day I might meet him but I never did.
Rarely a week goes by that I don't listen to his songs. To hear new words last week, driving home on roads I know well, turning corners in darkness, I was thinking of the reviews that said it was an end, a culmination of a life but I felt only excitement and a sense of renewal to hear new words from that voice, " Steer your heart past the Truth you believed in yesterday"
Now a baby is due early next year and life is changing again and my wife and I have discussed calling him Leonard - even though we already gave the cat that name. The cat is sat beside me now. He has that beautiful other worldliness and deep familiarity that all cats do and is at the heart of good poetry.
I'm reading all the beautiful thoughts people have given following Leonard’s passing and then Leonard's thoughts of Lorca, "I've never left that world. I stand here tonight and I invite you all to join me here. There's lots of space, there's no boundaries, there's no politics, no language. All you have to do is celebrate the sunlight coming through the hair of your beloved. It's a simple thing."
I live and linger in the space of Leonard's invitation. He shone through a world of static. He was a lighthouse keeper. He did the hard work and once again has gone before us. I'm so thankful to have known his work. Where he goes now I have no thoughts but know he is better placed than most of us to find his way.
My deepest condolences to his family and to all the people here and my thanks to Jarkko, Allan and all the others who have kept Leonard's work alive and continue to do so.
