CBC radio host Paul Kennedy is launching a campaign to get Leonard Cohen nominated for a Nobel Prize. The campaign begins, with help from George Elliott Clarke, Michel Garneau, Edward Palumbo and Karen Young, on Saturday, April 2 at 20h30, at Blue Metropolis in Montreal.
Does Leonard Cohen deserve a Nobel prize? Is it the sort of thing a seventy-something buddhist would want? Is it the sort of thing a thirty-somethng Cohen would have wanted?
There Are Some Men
There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names to time.
Grave-markers are not high enough
or green,
and sons go far away
to lose the fist
their father’s hand will always seem.
I had a friend:
he lived and died in mighty silence
and with dignity,
left no book, son, or lover to mourn.
Nor is this a mourning-song
but only a naming of this mountain
on which I walk,
fragrant, dark, and softly white
under the pale of mist.
I name this mountain after him.