The Other Café
Hearing ‘Caravan’ by Duke Ellington
and I’m at the Blue Parrot in Casablanca:
the house bird perched outside
unfazed by whirring ceiling fans
and the belly dancer’s creeping shadow.
The band playing jazz to a fluent clientele
leave the exotic bird unperturbed.
A street market unfolds under her gaze.
How simple the menu at the Blue Parrot:
pleasure, talk, a handshake, the deal.
No choice to be made about right or wrong,
ideals or love, one song over another.
Buying and selling is Signor Ferrari’s trade,
attending to his business of the day,
a rake-off on sex, liquor, hookahs.
The patrons of the Blue Parrot,
each going their own way to somewhere,
outside into the busy street
heading for wherever home is,
or through a crystal curtain at the Blue Parrot
to the dark side of a mountain, desert.
Ghosts in the dream song here.
- Anthony Costello
https://www.spectator.co.uk/poem/the-other-caf-
