edithpiaf

33d

Smoky sky.
In autumn wind
I stroll by the quays
in the last light…

—Edwin Morgan, “Je ne regrette rien: in memory of Edith Piaf”
first published in THE SECOND LIFE (EUP, 1968); republished in COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2012)

Edith Piaf died #OTD, 10 October, 1963

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781857541885

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdithPiaf

Edwin Morgan
Je ne regrette rien
in memory of Edith Piaf

Smoky sky.
In autumn wind
I stroll by the quays
in the last light,
my coat flaps, flaps,
wet chestnut leaves
spatter the Seine.
I glance in a window
and touch my hair, yes
I am tiny as they say,
tiny as a sparrow.
Now the lights come on.
I stand under the lamp,
turn up my collar
in a circle of rain
and wait for you.

It’s all beginning again.
Dead leaves or spring
it comes back, it begins.
How could I struggle?
When you held me, your shoulders
were a wall, I sheltered
in your shadow, it began.
They say I couldn’t count my men –
in thirty years I couldn’t count them!
But who counts years?
Count the years I was blind?
Dandled in a brothel? Taught by whores?
Count the prayers that gave me my sight at Lisieux?
Or the heartbeats of my daughter, in thousands,
when I bore her at fourteen
till she starved and died?
Count the crusts I’ve had, or those I’ve given?
The gutters I’ve sung in, or the great halls?
Count the glasses I’ve drunk? Count the beds
I’ve lain in, the lips I’ve kissed?
I can’t count the surgeons who’ve opened me –
do you think my lovers are in a book?
Do you want me to start counting tears?
Count what? The cost? What cost? I won!

No! let the men that had me go their ways.
I regret nothing, nothing. Some were kind.
But I don’t care if they were kind!
I don’t remember if it was bad.
I don’t keep the past in my pocket.

ALT

I’ve paid for it all, I’ve forgotten it all.
I’ve paid for it all, I’ve forgotten it all.
I strike a match to my memories,
they light a fire and disappear.

I warm my arms tonight
the fire begins
the stars come out
yes it begins
I am forty-five
it begins again
I hear his step
yes it begins
his broad shoulders
glisten through the rain
I can see
the dead cigarette
in his firm mouth
he throws it aside
it begins and
I regret nothing

We sway in the rain,
he crushes my mouth.
What could I regret
if a hundred times
of parting struck me
like lightning if this
lightning of love
can strike and
strike
again!

ALT

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