Leonard is singing as I write, dancing us to the end of time, letting the light in. So hard 
to believe he’s gone. Days of my youth, breaking away and out into a new world where we played Cohen endlessly and loud, as I am today, the soundtrack to our lives and loves. The man who’d seen and warned us of the future
This morning my husband gave me his poem, written for Leonard.
So Long
And what will lovers say?
Will he still be with them
when love withers in the winter frost?
Whose songs will help the loveless now he’s gone?
Will casualty departments fill with helpless cases
jostling with weekend drunks and self–piercings
gone horribly wrong?
Who will heal the broken hearted now that he’s gone?
Love sores may weep forever,
is there another voice to close an open wound?
Or songs to give hope to those that live without
Hallelujahs. Our greatest lover.
So long, possessor of women.
God is listening, wondering
if one day he will be in need of your healing.
John Lenton
So many of his lines have sustained me in very different ways. ‘If your life is a leaf the seasons tear off and condemn’, and, ‘when you’re not feeling holy your loneliness says that you’ve sinned’. To quote but two. And the understated sotto voce riff on guitar which ‘Suzanne’ begins with, has calmed much fury and anguish over the years. Goodbye my old leather slippers Leonard.
Me too and I love that line from the Sister’s of Mercy.