QUEEN VICTORIA

Queen Victoria, my father and all his tobacco loved you
I love you too in all your forms
The slim and lovely virgin floating among German beer
The mean governess of the huge pink maps
The solitary mourner of a prince

Queen Victoria, I am cold and rainy
I am dirty as a glass roof in a train station
I feel like an empty cast iron exhibition
I want ornaments on everything
Because my love, she gone with other boys

Queen Victoria, do you have a punishment under the white lace
Will you be short with her? Will you make her read those little Bibles
Will you spank her with a mechanical corset?
I want her pure as power, I want her skin slightly musty with petticoats
Will you wash the easy bidet out of her head?

Queen Victoria, I'm not much nourished by modern love
Will you come into my life, with your sorrow and your black carriages
And your perfect memories?

Queen Victoria, the twentieth century belongs to you and me
Let us be two severe giants not less lonely for our partnership
Who discolor test tubes in the halls of science
Who turn up unwelcome at every world's fair

Heavy with proverbs and corrections
Confusing the star-dazed tourists
With our incomparable sense of loss