Eliza's Apparition

[A kingly figure approaches in majestic feminine mystique. The lads stop in the play and sport, as she nears and begins to speak]

ELIZA Gloriana the Virgin Queen

My Loving People—

Here—now—

My Natural Body before you all,

you the Body Politic.

Busy bees—buzzy busy bumbling

—vectors in the transfer of pollen—

Herdsman all—our loving land—

our cradle and royal wool factory:

coronate, you must regard me, see

RUFFLES cup and folds, interior wrappings are

Petals forming the corolla—

We stand before you in array of Glory—

and sepals form the Calyx

(what Paragon of Plants I cut)—

We perform the bloom and the bug with Our guise:

dressing as doth the meadow-bee;

Queen Bee presence, we show you

meadows of wildflower mead.

My vegetal part of ruffles in the perianath

protects and decks me, mends

my color with my insectile decor,

whorl of chaliced petals to my apex,

poll ensconced in the ruffles.

From the outermost to the innermost whorl,

there is some kind of trifold progression.

I am

—your property—

my skull or reproductive spaces,

Like a crown or a cup for a crown,

the floriform,

the hollow of my corolla and calyx to attract,

to bob and impose, indomitable in stare,

to kill with looks, fascinate, ensnare,

o my Eyes

I draw your sight to the nexus of pollination—

Behold—

dear Frog

We are Matriarch in Patriarch,

to play the hermaphrodite King

by feminine form, who better than We?

O my loving people! I know

you have sifted through my papers! you found

The Caring and Curing of the Mysterious Tutor

after romps in the garden at 14,

my natural body if sexually abused

or not consensual wanting the advances

initiate if uninitiated by a certain T. Seymour,

slapped on my buttocks in morning horseplay,

or my girlish gown slashed in play

into a thousand pieces:

you can slash a day into a thousand pieces too—

and yet still, semper Virgo Intacta.

Never indeed trust a courtier

who wears mauve (my advice):

he is sure to be a Papist.

But soon I rose to We—

when I was in the garden of my prison estate,

because I was prisoner too—

no crown, a Quaker Maid,

under the knotty gnarled and bulging oak,

now named by Messenger Glorious among Women,

the envoy genuflext, and I, Overcome,

knelt to adopt the Royal We, in tears.

My Coronation, and Accomplishments—

A Pure White Spathe encloseth the holy Caput Reginae.

The Theater of Nature is my theater of display,

the industrious silkworm’s toil is mine

and the seas’ orb-bearing oyster

contributed to my making.

I will school you in simple truths:

I am not only a Queen

but a tanner and a tin-smith,

a collier and a shepherd—

For you my beloved People

Green Wood or Old Wood /wood for Us—

My Legacy: I deforested Ireland to

amass that fleet—that famous fleet!

Alack, for Mortality!

The Law of Nature makes me a Creature:

but His Heavenly Will makes me in natural body,

a body politic to govern; my same Body; and So

from our Body We give you new Lands,

Shepherds, my Land, your Land,

in this my body of a weak woman

still the untouched virginal land remains,

my mortal coil, the body of Selfhood,

But in ma Belle Majesté lies the Selfhood of the

Body Politic, selfsame by the body of our Savior:

why should I then wed? when I am already wed to

You, my Nation and progenitor, and that same Body Politic,

and tho I know I have by nature

the body of a weak and feeble woman,

yet I have the heart and stomach of a King:

how should I therefore, Virgin Monarch,

forsake the Benefits of the Celibate Life,

being as for You alone I bore the Cuirass

of Brass Impregnable when Death

coming alone with a pin

to bore a hole in and then

when all along I was making love

to that Loyalest of all Audiences:

The English People

But we are enforced

to farming our royal realms—so now,

Forgive my actions and

go boys, tend your sheep as before.

I redistribute to you New Lands,

wrested from the hands of the old

Northern Traitors;

Go now,

I am the Name of the Elizabethan Age

and we would like for you to remember us

in writing.

[they beg Her to sing them a Classic Lyric before she leaves, what follows in ELIZA’S SONG ]

VIDEO ET TACEO

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

I am and am not, I freeze and yet am burned,

Since from myself another self I turned.”

VIDEO ET TACEO

My care is like my shadow in the sun,

Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,

Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.

His too familiar care doth make me rue it.

No means I find to rid him from my breast,

Till by the end of things it be supprest.

VIDEO ET TACEO

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,

For I am soft and made of melting snow;

Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.

Let me or float or sink, be high or low.

Or let me live with some more sweet content,

Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

VIDEO ET TACEO

Eliza’s Motto A GLOSS

I look but see not? nay! video et taceo my loves, that is Our Royal Person [in a nutshell] but not always without a printed whisper, eyes open shut wide with ears always alert and gaping I see and I hush then I ambush in silence but ah! if I could ride indefinite, my people! yet my life is not my own but yours and made of but a limited span; at times I must be cruel my broadened voice must spread the queenly colors in edicts of brood and flash with the splitting of thunder while by pretty foot and cherry lip (although advanced in years) indeed in dalliance and with a bonny eye CAN YOU DENY however if I could make my own personal choices and visit only where I liked I’d flirt all day with buttercups and marry whom I may and no man visit me ALAS though I must not only wear but be the insignia of the State as tutelary spirit sporting I mean to the horned crown of throne with thorns embedded and the re-importing for a nation the gilded Age of Saturn, return of Virgo to the heavens which from on high to you this virgin shepherdess offers her ovaries as her dearest queenly sacrifice: for I am at once in One the Red Rose and the White.

//: You could melt her snow emotionally, but could you make her cave to your advances?

TO BE THE ELIZABETHAN AGE (Or Not To...)

But then other than the scattered words she left and the portraits that were painted of her the rest are posthumous generational memories of legend-making engendered and barely accidentally by the Queen Bee of all Damselhood Heroica—golden antlered heroine of bucks—the undressable invisible nudity of nationalism individual if not with liberty at least with justice for all—Paragon of Shepherdesses non denudable salt and soil of this same sweet land: that She played with her Lion like it were just a little Kitty-doll, now an old woman, now a specter of memory—

[showing that Magna Mater, with her cannon and her brass and the tint and boom of her timbrel clash, was indomitable to the fiercest ferals whom she patted and pet]

made it lie w/the Lamb/

“Lions do make Leopards tame”

DIVA VIRAGO

My Bucolica is a modern reboot of the "eclogue" form originating in Classical Greece and Rome and much rehashed throughout all European literature. It usually comes in the form of a collection of shepherd's songs, dialogues, and stories featuring themes of love/desire, nature/the seasons, death/mortality, and the passing of time. It is often a playground to poeticize the animal world and humankind's relation to it, as well as particulars of the seemingly idyllic life led by simple shepherds and farmers in Arcadia. It is also referred to as bucolic literature. I wrote my Bucolica 2017-2018 in a mix of poetry and prose.