Return To Sorrento
(N.A.A.F.I. = universal store, found on
every British military base)
On some bleak airfield on some Cambridge fen
(that awful winter - 'forty-seven, I think)
my mother, novice servicewoman then,
crossed parade-ground like a skating rink
to see the Christmas concert on the camp.
Inside, the quonset hut was black as ink
till airmen lit a feeble spirit lamp.
The snow was driving against one outer wall:
she calls to mind a smell of tents and damp
and stinging fingers, fresh from thrown snowballs,
and gouts of steam, blown out in cloudy spurts
as people laughed. Then lights dimmed in the hall.
She now recalls a curious stab of hurt
to see the Italian janitor of the base
revealed onstage in P.O.W. shirt
when curtains opened. What had been a place
of uproar, now - faced by this threadbare clown -
had undergone some dreadful loss of face.
In dubbin make-up, N.A.A.F.I. dressing-gown,
as solemn as a high priest at the altar,
this patched-up Pagliacci, ear-flaps down,
sang ludicrously well. The keyboard faltered,
and stopped. The singer, weeping now, kept on,
quite heedless, as his clown's nose dripped tear-water.
There's something sacred in the humblest song
(with wretchedness wrought into lasting good
through alchemy of art) and, all along,
the watchers, to their horror, understood.
He sang so gorgeously of going home
because he knew full well he never would.
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