Stranger Heart
Alexander Etheridge
--for Leonard Cohen
Where have you gone now, and through which night
do you follow your ghost?
Stranger, are you lost in your dream,
or are we? Stranger Music, stranger
words. Now we all gather
by your Nirvana stream—let us learn
how to disappear with you as you
lived, in a cool blue
fire—let us be born here as you
died, on a slowly turning moon. May we find a place
in your afterglow, alien to ourselves,
lighting for you a thin green
candle, as your last breath billows white in a cold
otherworld, connecting
the living to the dead, there in a vast winter garden.
We’ve asked for your pages softly flying
among the apple trees and wildgrass.
We’ve prayed with your alphabet that’s speckled
with silence and woven with burgundy
dusk. Come to us once more, down from your quiet
mountain temple, watch us with your closed eyes,
grant us miracle and daydream, minor chords
and lost testaments. May we see you
again, may we follow you following
your shadow to the home of your birth, those rooms
now darkened by beautiful black stars,
along the edges of time’s great loop—may we
find you the unknown,
and find ourselves
waiting for you, wise one, moving through blue
mist, leading our steps from behind us.
do you follow your ghost?
Stranger, are you lost in your dream,
or are we? Stranger Music, stranger
words. Now we all gather
by your Nirvana stream—let us learn
how to disappear with you as you
lived, in a cool blue
fire—let us be born here as you
died, on a slowly turning moon. May we find a place
in your afterglow, alien to ourselves,
lighting for you a thin green
candle, as your last breath billows white in a cold
otherworld, connecting
the living to the dead, there in a vast winter garden.
We’ve asked for your pages softly flying
among the apple trees and wildgrass.
We’ve prayed with your alphabet that’s speckled
with silence and woven with burgundy
dusk. Come to us once more, down from your quiet
mountain temple, watch us with your closed eyes,
grant us miracle and daydream, minor chords
and lost testaments. May we see you
again, may we follow you following
your shadow to the home of your birth, those rooms
now darkened by beautiful black stars,
along the edges of time’s great loop—may we
find you the unknown,
and find ourselves
waiting for you, wise one, moving through blue
mist, leading our steps from behind us.
Alexander Etheridge has poems featured in The Potomac Review, Scissors and Spackle, Ink Sac, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. He is the author of two forthcoming collections, Snowfire and Home, and, God Said Fire.