orphan

…and, with the film-maker, he returns
to where he sang, as a boy, in a boat;
a prisoner, an orphan, a Jew dumping sacks of crushed bone in the river;
keeping the Germans entertained with the
Prussian marching songs they had taught him –
and the Poles so charmed that, now he has returned
in middle age, they reminisce fulsomely:
bemused, he turns to camera in such pain…