Gift
You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
"This is not silence
this is another poem"
and you would hand it back to me.
Commentary
One technical note: Where this appeared in a poetry book (Sound and Sense, 6th ed., by Laurence Perrine) the two lines I have placed in quotes were unquoted but italic. Since that can’t be done by many people’s e-mail systems, I used this punctuation. It is presumably a song lyric (it being Leonard Cohen), so the typographic details are less important than with other poems.
I don’t know what I can say about this one. There’s commentary on Leonard Cohen elsewhere on the Minstrels archive. I assume it’s actually a song lyric, but I don’t know the song. I just like it for its nice zen quality, which makes you think more about the structure of poems, or the meaning of “poem.” Perhaps the best way to perform this as a song would be to record silence (a la John Cage’s 4’33”) but include the lyrics on the album jacket or CD booklet.
But apart from the self-reference (which I always like) the content of the poem sets before us and yet gently twists a moment of potential stress between the poet and the one for whom he writes. He can’t get anything right: the one for whom he writes prefers silence, yet recognizes any gift he brings, even a poem’s “negative space,” as poetry in itself. Compliment to the poet, sure, but makes it clear nonetheless that no gift from him is acceptable… Respect is not, likely, all he wants from his special audience and dedicatee. Or that’s one way to take it.
RCB.
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