She lived with her father in an 18th century chateau
The very age when Sade's brain went for a walk
Only to come back with a testament of horrors
Neighbors and doctors pitied mum and dad
The day they saw her wayward looks and customs
Mum was the lady of the land
A rigid silhouette with pious manners
But no one was as good as daddy
Nor with so handsome an allure
The two would climb the hills of coal for hours
And she was smitten with his dreams of her
None of such fictions would come true though
They had to cope with the grim concept
She was too shy a nature to be schooled
Some days she heard the silly chuckles
Of youngsters rushing home from classes
That was a noise which always soured her mood
Until disrupted by her mummy's pancakes
And by her daddy knocking on the front door
She was the happiest with them
It was so nice to watch the good old Doris Days
Throughout the good old Wednesday evenings
All gathered by a pot of tea
Together
Their castle was a solemn wreck
Ivy and moist chaining its daunting walls
Madonnas paling on the ceiling
And port-fenetres stained by fog
She become lady of the land
A patron to her ailing father
The day her mother died
While praying in the kiosk
Their manor turned into a moody foster-home
Where she and daddy keenly sweet-talked
And pillow-fought each other
Not all was joyous in those days though
Autumn would come and sweep the brides away
And every year they'd get younger than her
Skin smoothing in prenuptial glory
She kept her dream of wedding some day
Although the beaus she happened to encounter
Would creep away from her politely
And laugh behind her back with fellow nubiles
The day her 40th January came
She felt it was time to grow up
She switched paper planes with macramé
Trying to sooth daddy's arthritis with gobelins
His cheer succumbed to brittle moans each day
Sometimes he was simply too much to bear
Until the day he spared her from his grumps
The very day she saw him lying shrunk
Limbs cramped under a snow of moths
Sheets eaten by dandruff and lice
It was as if she saw him for the first time
After a long surreal dream
How could that sorry pack of bones
Amount to daddy?
Men came with ugly big machines
As from an era she was unfamiliar with
They pulled her benumbed body out of home
And tore her castle down to dust
So baby walked away in dread and lonely
The air was new, the buildings tall and crowded
Nothing felt normal anymore
There was no tiny shred of obsolete
Fat cars screaming with people
Houses where folks jostled each other
To watch enormous colored screens talk
Women and men, women and women
Would touch each others' lips in cabarets –
The horror!
Her mummy had long taught her of the mortal sin
Which spreads far from the eye who's watching
All that she had once known so surely
Had left no crumbs behind for her to follow
Ahead was an odd ball of intersections
The latest trick she could not learn
What would become of her
Where would she take her laddered stockings?
Stray dogs, stray cats, stray her
Synonymous between the rusty leaves of fall
Leftovers of some whimsy womb
Laughed at by naked bellies.