"Drifting In And Out Of Reflection"

[Michael Griffiths]

"Drifting In And Out Of Reflection"


Drifting in a machine
of the world?s webs,
I dream of becoming my own operator.
To see my human flesh in this world
is to see a life come from
nowhere.
To see my father?s face
every time I look in the mirror,
I have to wonder: where are the people who
knew him?
For these people will never know him?
they don?t even care to know me,
letting me drift away without any
real authenticity,
keeping me from becoming the true soul
of my father?s face.

This is also an old poem from a couple years ago. It's loosely based on a poem Leonard Cohen wrote about his own father. (So I wrote it about my dad, in the same kind of tone as Leonard's poem, as I really related to it.) His is much better, though!

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The Tempest

 

[bicyclingfish]

Which of Cohen's are you talking about? I just got his poetry/song book and I wonder if its in there.

I really relate to what you wrote here. Its crazy getting older and recognizing HIS expressions, HIS gestures, HIS language at different places in MY life! I'd spoze its inevitable, eh?

Thanks for posting this.

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Come on, come on! Be good to me...

 

[zooropamanda]

Yes, thankyou Michael.

 

[Michael Griffiths]

Hey Amanda. Glad you liked it.

Bicyclingfish,

I can't remember the name of the poem, but I'll look it up for you later today sometime. I read it in his biography: A Life Of Leonard Cohen

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The Tempest

 

[Michael Griffiths]

Bicyclingfish,

The poem was never published, but there's an excerpt of it in the book I mentioned above. The author's name is Ira B. Nadel. Here's the text of the book that deal's with the poem (it's not the entire poem, unfortunately):


Cohen handled the pain of his father's death stoically. "I didn't feel a profound sense of loss, maybe because he was very ill throughout my entire childhood," he later said. In an unpublished poem that celebrates his father, writen on the Greek island of Hydra, Cohen writes:

No one looks like my father
but me
In the world I alone
wear his face
And here I am in places
he never would have travelled
among men
who think I am myself...


So there you have it. Isn't it amazing how Cohen can get under the deep layers of the human psyche, without even seeming to try? He amazes me.

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The Tempest

 

[Michael Griffiths]

Bicyclingfish,

Correction: The biography I read is called

Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen

I still haven't got home to check the name of the poem, but should have it for you later today.

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The Tempest