Happy Empire Day!

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,
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.

 -- Leonard Cohen