CODA (an extract)

Take five! Take longer if you feel like it. Here's this crazy, this wacker, this ... this ... whatever you feel like calling the poor coot, obsessed, so riddled with this maggot to sing, golden­-throated, golden-tongued, Tosti's last song, the ultimate lament, from a bridge in Venice, a bridge spanning one of the smaller canals leading into the bassino.