Audrey

Oh, how we love you, Audrey, though you've long gone to your rest;
we watch the bright stars shining and see you, the very best.
Though now your image dances only through dark's borrowed light,
somehow we hope, dear Audrey, that you'll hear these words we write.

Your mother would have acted, were it not (to her distress)
that she had to play the role of the worldly Baroness.
Your father, banker Ruston, who never a bank was at,
put on the name of Hepburn to play at aristocrat.

And you were born in Holland in a decade after war.
You grew in quiet Arnhem and in England off the shore.
Audrey, as a tiny child you so dearly loved the dance,
and your balletic mother so encouraged your advance.

But as you grew, you dancer, violent echoes shook the land,
and into peaceful Holland mother led you by the hand.
She hoped that there in Arnhem you could weather the day's rage,
but soon this place of refuge would become a fearful cage.

For to your door in Arnhem all the German armies came;
from fear of seeming English, you took Edda as your name.
You, sympathetic Edda, saw your neighbors sent to camps,
and in the wartime famine suffered undernourished cramps.

Oh, that you should have suffered so, that you were crushed by pain!
Oh, that your bright eyes darkened to see bodies of the slain!
But you were made of sturdy stuff, though shaken to the roots,
saw peace return to Arnhem under English parachutes.

Now Audrey, though unbroken, something quivered at your core,
a ling'ring thinness in the blood, and memories of war.
You'd never be a dancer, and it lacerates your soul:
"Too tall and far too sickly to take on the prima role."

Though hurt, dismayed, with purpose clear you made a change of scene,
by action saw your image now projected on the screen.
And you were Europe's answer to the California girl;
you would have been a dancer but you hypnotized the world.

Far off from wartime Holland, where the bombs burst very loud,
you wrapped yourself in innocence to soothe a weary crowd.
Though you were never simple, though you knew quite well the score,
knew there's courage in bright smiles in a decade after war.

Capote made a fuss when you played his Ms. Golightly,
and we must ask you, Truman, just what you found unsightly?
You won our hearts, you callgirl with a writer at her door;
is Truman simply miffed you said, "I'll never play a whore?"

Who were you, Audrey Hepburn, and why did you quit the game?
Why toss away all Hollywood upon the peak of fame?
Though other women sold their lives and lost their ownmost souls,
you sailed when the tide was high, and pursued far different goals.

Oh, how we miss you, Audrey, now you've long gone to your rest;
we watch the bright stars shining and see you, the very best.
Though now your image dances only through dark's borrowed light,
oh, how we pray, dear Audrey, that these words will reach your sight!