Poetry by Robert David Cohen

Discovery '65 Poetry Reading

Mark Strand, Jim Harrison, Nancy Sullivan and Robert David Cohen reading their poetry at the Discovery 65 award event.

I'm up first...

https://soundcloud.com/robert-david-cohen/discovery65-92nd-street-y-poetry-center

Poetry I recorded at the Harvard Lamont Poetry Library in 1966

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https://soundcloud.com/robert-david-cohen/19661028-robert-david-cohen-poetry-reading

To a friend with Alzheimer’s

Everything is falling
Off the edge of everything

I stand at attention and salute
As he spins into darkness

Everything now a filigree of gold
Lifted by a breeze

Fragile fragile fragile

He is humming
Ever singing

-- New York City, 5 May 2015

I am Charlie Hebdo

I'm in bed

Thinking of waking

When the day breaks in

Wearing a balaclava

Carrying a Kalashnikov

Shouting my name

Charlie Hebdo

Now that I count my years

On a hand

I say to myself

I can banish fear

Now that my bed launches me

Into orbits of delight

And peals of laughter

Charlie Hebdo

I know now there’s beauty enough

In the world

To fashion ten billion eyes

Strength enough to wield ten billion pens

I refuse to surrender

I will be the mocking storm

As they place stones on me like a tomb

I will take my little life to the world

-- New York, January 8, 2015

Gran Frijolada

-- for Idelfonso Ramos on the anniversary of his death

Here we are

My brother

It’s time it’s that time again

For the gran frijolada

The yearly mess of beans

I cook up Cuban-style

In your honor

The beans are soaking

My secret ingredient is ready

Here we are

You are on the other side

Resolviendo

Getting done whatever it is

That gets done

On the lush island that is death

On the isle of memory and grateful forgetting

Always 90 miles

Always an inch away

There you are

Still making the documentary of your life

And me

The gringo whose life you saved

With a couch and an abrazo

I’ve still got one foot

Planted and dancing in the dirt of time

The other

Where else?

In my mouth

That won’t stop singing

Here we are

A celebration that must always be improvised

Motivito to welcome some minute arrived from afar

From thin air you pull

An armful of icy beers

Like rabbits from a magician’s hat

Son de la Loma

Blasting from the cassette player

Heard all down the street

The neighbors dancing too

Heard by lovers

As far off

As the malecón

I can hear it again now

Trio Matamoros

Who wouldn’t dance in your presence?

Your shadow dancing

With a permanent

Smile and hard-on

Stars and cancer everywhere

Here we are

Idel

Dumbstruck and far flung

Shipwrecked and rescued

Sheer luck everywhere

Full of beans and magic

-- New York, 31 December 2013

Paul Celan quote

In his Bremen Prize speech, Paul Celan said of language after Auschwitz that:

“Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it. Went through and could resurface, 'enriched' by it all."

For Ezra

Visiting you in the foreign country of the just-born

Country of my blood citizenship

I speak to you in the language of touch

The language of breath

Practice of rocking

You smell like hot milk

The moment around you is curved

You are heavy with light

I love above all your fontanel and its pulse

Below all I love the purpose of you

Wise gazer

Your long fingers looking for a piano

You, Ezzie, are still all of us

You are the sweet Mama and Dada of your making

Yourself

I surf the waves of your particles

Entangled across 3 thousand miles

-- Vancouver-New York, February/March 2013

Still waiting

Sixty years later
Still waiting
For Marianne O'Connor's
Second kiss

-- Vancouver, January 27, 2013

Woke up from a dream wanting

To say goodbye to words

Wanting to see them float away

Bobbing on dark waves

Like candles in paper boats

On Lake Patzcuaro

On the Day of the Dead

-- New York, January 15, 2013

Report from Carnepropia

Sleeping alone these months

Citizen of the land of Carnepropia

Released on my own recognizance

Neither downcast nor joyful

Listening to my earworms

To the whispered counsel of my shadow

-- New York, November 9, 2012