a deep happiness

I have been enjoying reading a collection of Leonard Cohen's poems and songs entitled "Stranger Music". Near the end of the book I found this little poem - "A Deep Happiness" - to which I find myself returning ...

A deep happiness
    has seized me

My Christian friends say
that I have received
   the Holy Spirit
It is only the truth of solitude
It is only the torn anemone
fastened to the rock
   its root exposed
to the off-shore wind
O friend of my scribbled life
your heart is like mine -
your loneliness
   will bring you home


- Leonard Cohen (Stranger Music, p. 398)


                                                                                                                                      sm