Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria
My father and all his tobacco loved you
I love you too in all your forms
The slim unlovely virgin floating among German beards
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, 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 memory?

Queen Victoria
The 20th Century belongs to you and me
Let us be two severe giants
(not less lonely for our partnership)
Who discolour test tubes in the halls of science
Who turn up unwelcome at every World's Fair
Heavy with proverb and correction
Confusing the star-dazed tourists
With our incomparable sense of loss