for Jean Paul De Santi
When I last spoke to Cocteau
he told me about a spin-
-ning game he played
as a child,
. I laughed but Cocteau
just smiled – then serious
he said “I wrote to Satie
the other day but I don’t expect a reply.”
I told him I’d been to Arcueil
just after Satie died,
found a pile of unopened letters
near where he worked.
Cocteau didn’t want to talk
anymore & said we should
go for a drink
he pointed to the end of the street
where a piano played the sound of clouds
but I was too tired.
A version of this poem was first published in Writ. Poetry Review, 5 January, 2015
The above revision appears in The Frequency of God, Close-Up Books (December, 2017)
A video of the earlier version is available here
An audio of the earlier version is available here
