After THE DUKE HOTELs demolition,
(opp. Perretts Corner) one last joke: one DB
beer bottle ringed by ten green cabbages
as roseate or wreath for an empty lot. Close by,
the mad bucketing fountain of Cuba Mall
played on. Meanwhile, at his Manners street
studio above the music shop, Graham
Clifford, renowned for his Figaro, ululated
profoundly through the scales. A window framed
trolley-bus poles that, tacking, flared bluely
along the wire. The maestros voice floated
over harbour & city, capital & far-flung country,
far from Covent Garden. A 1930s London
partied on amongst black & white photographs
plastered to the wall above a battered Steinway.
On Brooklyn hills toi toi waved war plumes
to the southerly gusts with unceasing applause.
Through a hundred, sunblown wintry afternoons
he coached opera singers, actors, newsreaders,
plucked notes off the yellow stained keys:
he guided, rolled golden vowels, before them.