The Butterfly Hears Tchaikovsky

Did it blunder in from the street?

Worse, imagine it reborn

among the platform flowers,

the first venture of delicate wings

wafting it straight to hell.

Our minds flooded with metaphor –

Francesca, Paolo, the manic winds

they’re whirled in, all music

out of a soul in torment –

we watch that silky flier

lost in the glare, bewildered by

the shock of storming brass.

Flickering, it soars, dips,

traverses, its frail career

scribbled on art in a real

violence. When the applause breaks

it's gone – twitching perhaps

beside a player's foot, finished off

by the tuba's final blast,

the sumptuous crash of gong and cymbals.

RICHARD KELL

Old Usher

for Farès Moussa

I have

shouted Lights! in the foyer as the show begins

I have

opened and closed a million doors

Push and Pull stamping my palms

I have

woken with Good Evening on my lips

I have

ROH in moles over my left nipple

I have

Tchaikovsky as a heart-beat

I have

told ten thousand bladders

It's down the slope and on the right

I have

stood at the bottom of Floral Hall stairs

with Peter Bramley at the top

tapping the metal hand-rail with his ring

to annoy me

I have

bent my head to complaints about the row in front

the big hair-do, the change-jingler, those who snore or smell

I have

turned a blind eye, a deaf ear, and a stopped nostril

I have

opened and closed a million doors

Push and Pull stamping my palms

I have

waited in the wings to present flowers

cygnets wafting past me in a crush of tutus

each back tight with the cordage of muscle

I have

sold ices with Susie Boyle

I have

passed the black-and-white monitor at Stage Door

and felt proud to see Haitink in the pit

a bottled homunculus preserved in music

I have

opened my locker on a vista of dirty shirts

I have

killed a moth for Monica Mason

It wants to settle on me!

she who once danced her death in the Rite

now frightened of millimetres of flutter