Queen Victoria

(A Cohen Poem Set To Music)

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 discolour 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.