The Deaths of Mad Queens
The heroines in Racine’s tragedies
Are monsters, dignities destroyed by heat
Of passion harder than a marble frieze,
Rock lust for man or boy. Queens’ hearts replete
With rage and love, this royalty is blind
As Oedipus’s eyes with jelly slimed
From them because of mother’s brooch. We find
That Verlaine is descended from them, rhymed
With them, says Proust. Betrayed simplicity
And elegance as naked as a god
Result from Paul Verlaine’s toxicity
And harmonies, and then it isn’t odd
That he is Phèdre, as condemned as Troy
Because of that depravity and boy.
