LOOK: Chris Cornell honored by Audioslave’s Tom Morello with a poem
The death of rock musician Chris Cornell brought the entire international music industry in mourning. It is a great, sudden loss of a great, singular talent, as declared by no less than the living legends of rock music—from Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page to The Band’s Robbie Robertson.
But the loss of his friendship and fellowship appears to be even more painful to his contemporaries, particularly with those whom he played with throughout his remarkable career, from the early years of grunge seeing him as frontman of Soundgarden, all the way to the period of his collaborative projects with other rock legends.
One of these stellar collaborations was Audioslave, a supergroup formed in 2001 by former members of Rage Against the Machine with Cornell as vocalist. The band went on to put out three albums before disbanding in 2007. Despite the split, Cornell and Tom Morello, Audioslave’s lead guitarist, have been vocal about the possibility of a reunion.
That reunion shall never happen now with Cornell’s death, but Morello, in a moving tribute to his fellow musician and friend, wrote a poem and shared it publicly via his official Instagram account on May 19.
Here is the full text of Morello’s poem:
Article continues after this advertisement“You’re a prince, you’re a snare, you’re a shadow
You’re twilight and star burn and shade
You’re a sage, you’re a wound shared, you’re masked
You’re a pillar of smoke, you’re a platinum heart
You’re a brush fire, you’re caged, you’re free
Your vision pierces, you do not see
You are pieces strewn on the hillside
You’re open armed, you’re armed, you’re true
You’re a revealer of visions, you’re the passenger, you’re a never fading scar
You’re twilight and star burn and shade
You’re the secret veiled, you’re the secret revealed, you’re surrounded no more
You’re not there, now you’re always here
You’re a handsome groom, a loving father, a haunted stairwell
You’re the clear bell ringing, the mountains echo your song
Maybe no one has ever known you
You are twilight and star burn and shade.” NG
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