Like an Offenbachian Marie Antoinette
Strangled by wicked bourgeois1, a marionette
Lady Guinevere precociously entangled
In her own mad puppeteer’s
Autarchic notion of a hoop-la,
Woman-machine-word2 Ellanor
Was foiled by the foibles of courtly love lore.
Easily the best-cast Renaissance Cadet of her day,
Wooed by superstar anthropologists and introvert agents of the CIA,
She saw reflected in Lud her love of Art,
In the latter a way to salvation.
Between the very rich hours of some Duke or other3
And those comforts to which she was accustomed,
Our fledgling juvenesced, sprouted wings,
Quit the nest and plopped straight atop of Lud’s mother.
To combine the love of Art with a liking for money
Is already the most inhuman of tasks;
That ones given to it should also take to their “in-laws”
Is, plainly, too much to ask.
The bowknot unraveled, the ribbon took flight
To the quantal designs of the wind.
Lud became adept of Mao,
Ellanor felt spurred to take vows:
God had divided; none could rescind.
Still, aren’t soon-to-would-be-nuns only begging, it seems,
To get whacked by some Mum-in-the-sky?
If their bum turns all red and the heat spreads inside,
Won’t they proffer some sobs, the Son faithfully plug ’em?