“Who is that plain little woman,”
asked Mistinguett,

“whose voice is too big for her body?”*

And there is a long wind descending
the aisles of the music halls where
she once reigned.

Yes, little. Yes, plain.

Here we stand, recalling,
in the pews of the Madeleine
twenty years after she has
ascended,

the smallest and the plainest,
with vox exemplary,
narrator of heartbeats,

she, Edith, the most exuberantly
imbalanced.

---

*Taken from Piaf by Margaret Crosland.