[David Callin]

Cantique de Noël
23 February 1916

To hear Caruso sing it, is to be taken back
to a room you’ve never known,
antimacassars, a gramophone,
the needle’s crackling travel in the track
through shellac, an aspidistra
listening in, the lights turned down.

The French are holding on at Verdun.
If music can be saved,
and made to sing, a cricket in a cage,
how farther off goodwill
and peace on Earth? Noël,
Noël! Oh well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFKrQ41oDLM