Just The Worse Time
This year time was long between
..... old gardeners tending
..... black-yellow heaps of smouldering leaves
and smothering children
armoured in Red River coats and muffler turns ---
..... and so as nude girls discovered bathing,
..... striken, somehow unable to cover their breasts
the embarrassed trees fidgeted
in unsolicited sun.
We were embarrassed too.
prayed for great heavy drifts of snow
to cover trees and bare streets,
to heap on roofs of houses,
to swaddle mountains and waters ---
but the snow came thin,
covering the ground like cheap gauze,
clinging in tatters to the bark,
..... preserving footprints in the mud.
No. It could not come like an aristocrat,
like de Bergerac,
like a white waving plume,
..... as we prayed for
..... and will pray for
..... again.
Autor(es): Leonard Cohen
