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For Leonard, My Friend
A Parisian Elegy
Leonard Leconte. Born May 21st 1940, Rheims.
Back when the moon wore cobblestones
and youth smelled of ink and café smoke,
lived in borrowed time
with a poet named Leonard
Not a man who called himself a poet —
no, he was one.
lived it, bled it,
wrote it in the folds of linen sheets
and on the lips of strangers
We shared a bathroom,
but more than that,
we shared a kind of hunger —
his quiet, mine boastful,
both devout
I wrote rhythms —
five hundred a morning,
each one hoping for a beautiful ear
to call it home
I’d court women on the Champs Élysées
with verses and vagabond eyes.
Leonard never chased —
they always came to him
He’d offer nothing but truth
wrapped in the satin of metaphor,
and somehow, it was enough
it lingered long after his poems ended
