A bleak week just got worse. The results of the US Presidential election are, frankly, beyond belief. We now have a xenophobic, racist, misogynistic megalomaniac waiting to move into the White House and become, literally, the most powerful man on earth.
And now Leonard Cohen has died.
Cohen is one of my all time favourite artists. A writer of beautiful poetry and lyrics beyond compare and endowed with a voice capable of moving me to tears. I cry now because that voice is silenced.
In the mid eighties he wrote “If it be your will” which starts:
If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
This year he wrote in “You want it darker”
If You are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If You are the healer, I’m broken and lame
If Thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
You want it darker – we kill the flame.
Magnified, sanctified is your holy name
Vilified, crucified in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker – Hineni, Hineni, I’m ready, my Lord.
Now he is gone, in the same week the US voted a dangerous buffoon to the Presidency. If there be a God, he has a cruel sense of humour. The world has just got darker.