<cohen's "song of patience"> 2002-11-28.11:08 p.m. Song of Patience Leonard Cohen For a lovely instant I thought she would grow mad and end the reason's fever. But in her hand she held Christ's splinter, so I could only laugh and press a warm coin across her seasoned breasts: but I remembered clearly then your insane letters and how you wove initials in my throat. My friends warn me that you have read the ocean's old skeleton; they say you stitch the water sounds in different mouths, in other monuments. "Journey with a silver bullet," they caution. "Conceal a stake inside your pocket." And I must smile as they misconstrue your insane letters and my embroidered throat. O I will tell him to love you carefully; to honour you with shells and coloured bottles; to keep from your face the falling sand and from your human arm the time-charred beetle; to teach you new stories about lightning and let you run sometimes barefoot on the shore. And when a needle grins bloodlessly in his cheek he will come to know how beautiful it is to be loved by a madwoman. And I do not gladly wait the years for the ocean to discover and rust your face as it has all of history's beacons that have turned their gold and stone to water's onslaught, for then your letters too rot with ocean's logic and my fingernails are long enough to tear the stitches from my throat. back /& forth /& frosting names are often sad