Flowers for Hitler

Queen Victoria and Me

Queen Victoria my father and all his tobacco loved you I love you too in all your forms the slim unlovely virgin anyone would lay the white figure 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 and make her read 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 bidets 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