Edith Piaf

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