I remembered someone saying

– with first-name familiarity

but too young to have known him –

Miles would never

have stooped to a moonwalk.

 

Looking back through a nicotine haze

to the husky chic of the fifties

and then beyond, I might have added

or a Bojangles shuffle.

 

The first time he played in Paris

the habitués of St Germain 

queued up to see him backstage.

 

When he improvised his score

to Ascenseur pour l'échafaud,

his horn was the loneliest

sound that year.