Loire Valley Château

Chenonceau: selfies by the coach-load

at this château on the Cher.

Chef d'oeuvre of hydroponic art,

like a house-plant extraordinaire

with its feet in running water,

it will arch over tea-or-coffee talk,

its bloom of transportable culture

dropping aesthetic seeds of colloquy,

from the salons of the States

to the boudoirs of Belarus.

If I donned my doublet and hose, I could

bow and scrape five hundred years away,

make renaissance with the festive dead,

bal-masqué for a whoring king,

(la fête is only a layer of dust away)

were it not for the tourists in between.

At least, outside, my hawk can soar

and blur them out, or swoop to the hand

of Diane de Poitiers in her prime,

dangling her legs, on the car-park wall.

(