Matters Foreign and Domestic (Die Au-Pair-Mädchen)

Often prey to luscious musing,

to calamitous infatuation;

and -thus enraptured- so bemused,

paralysed by enfeebling devotion.

Whence came this propensity?

the desire to worship at a shrine;

destined to repeat with such intensity,

this cursed, wearisome tale over time.

In the 1950’s, when I was young,

a succession of au-pair girls came;

from post-war Europe, part ‘help’ part Nanny,

I remember their faces, voices, names.

They magically appeared, transformed my world,

these young women who came to stay;

by strange inflections I was lulled,

at mealtimes, bedtime, bath time, play.

German accompanied my cereal, Italian my games,

from modulation, cadence, beguiled;

times of inventing, pretending, unconstrained,

a sensitive child with imagination wild.

I’ve wondered if such manifestations,

these appearances of another kind,

…in the way of astonishing visions,

set the patterns of my mind.

In between the visitations:

inertia, bewilderment, melancholy,

a yearning for the next liberation,

from colourless insufficient reality.

Then they would come! Oh Blessed Day,

bringing new scents, movement, sounds,

fascination, hope perhaps,

a change in mood, quite profound.

So the pattern was established:

dormancy, waiting, waiting, then

expectation, excitement, advent, bliss.

When they left, desolation, abandonment.

Peter Jennings

East Sussex

2026