You’ll Love It

Leonard Cohen keeps trying to do something he hasn’t done
before, and we find out again that he can do it. He can do it very
well.
You want him to play some dinky little keyboard and sing
along with the saxophone of Sonny Rollins? He’ll do it.
Oh, I got the hots for Leonard Cohen, says some creature
thirty years younger than me. Who the hell you talking about, I
say.
Leonard, everyone loves or hates your novel-why don’t you
write another one, already? Guy hasn’t read the novel.
God, look what he just did, says some reviewer, he’s blown his
reputation now, should have stuck with Phil Spector.
Millions of MlV fans, got their hats on backward, watch his
video over and over, never read one of his poems. This matters?
I know a couple professors write serious books about Leonard
Cohen and still like him. They found out they can do that more
than once.
Suzanne takes you down with a step-over toe-hold. But can
she pin you for the count of three?
Cohen’s up. He’s writing the libretto for a kind of opera you
haven’t even heard about yet, and I’ll tell you something.
You’ll hate it. It’ll get better all the time. You’ll love it.

Bowering lives in Vancouver, British Columbia and is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University, where he worked for 30 years. Never having written as an adherent of organized religion, he has in the past wryly described himself as a Baptist agnostic. In 2002, Bowering was appointed the first ever Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. That same year, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He was awarded the Order of British Columbia in 2004. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bowering)

Text is taken from the book, “Take This Walz, A Celebration of Leonard Cohen.” Edited by Michael Fournier and Ken Norris, published by The Muses Company, Ste. Anne de Belleview, Quebec, 1994.