Edith Piaf Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Edith Piaf: The Little Sparrow
Edith Gassion was born to a gypsy mother
An acrobat father. Reared in the squalor
Of Belleville, a Paris slum
She slept on the streets, a little ragged beggar
A manager plucked her out of the filthy gutter
Christened her ‘Piaf', scooped from poverty's scum

As an infant, three years she was blind
Till a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Therese
Worked miracles. In her teens
She bore a baby daughter, who died.
To cover the basic funeral cost
She whored herself to pay for a simple box

Edith's aunt Zaza was a tightrope walker,
Who handed her over to grandmother, a cook
In a brothel in Normandy. Nice company!
This four foot 10 inches of dynamite
Who lived amongst gangsters, prostitutes, pimps
The violent, the outlawed, the fallen
This mite was the cream of the crop
And generous to a fault!
‘You've to send the lift back down' she told her friends
So others may reach the top"

Captive in WW2, befriended by Jean Cocteau
High ranking Nazis adored this parvenu
Her life was a string of troubles and fleeting lovers
La Vie en Rose, her signature song
Set the USA on fire with admiration
She was a walking triumph, an inspiration

Her grand amour, Cerdan, a boxing champ,
Was killed in an airline crash
Three times she stepped herself
From the wreckage of a car smash

In New York she collapsed on stage
Internal haemorrhaging, a hospital dash
She returned to Cannes, and hired an ambulance,
But died en route to Paris, her childhood home

Alcohol, drugs, arthritis, insomnia, cancer,
Gastric ulcers, all had taken their toll
‘Non, je ne regrette rien' she sang, poor soul!
Worn down to the bone.

100,000 mourners grieved their idol's passing
Others fainted, so thick the crowds were massing
She'd a flower laden hearse, a black three car cortege
To the famous cemetery of Pere Lachaise
To lie beside Colette, Proust, Moliere and Oscar Wilde
Chopin and Balzac, the gypsy's cast-off child

Seven hours later, Jean Cocteau followed her
Into the soundless dark,
Death quenched that vital spark

Paris, Paris she gave you her Hymn to Love
That rang from the Eiffel Tower to theSeine, to the sewers
Poor people of Paris, her hopes, her dreams were yours

The pain of poverty wrung from one great heart
Piaf…a tragic ending, a tragic start