Friday
Here’s a random factoid that I report only because it gives me an excuse to share a poem by my father that I’ve always enjoyed. Apparently on this day in 1664, Louis XIV began constructing the Palais de Versailles.
The poem captures my father distaste for men who wave their—well—phalluses around while strutting their stuff. Sometimes they get the endorsement of the church in the process, and as always, it’s the working class that pays.
My father was a French professor who took multiple trips to Paris, which meant that I have been up the Eiffel Tower multiple times. When I was 13, I used to walk under it four times a day on my way to and from a French school. It was an impressive structure. But yes, very phallic.
Eiffel Tower
By Scott BatesFrom the top of this phallus
You can see to the palace
Which
With the blessing of Jesus
And plenty of class
King Louis Quatorze and his whores
Built for parties
Out of nothing but peasants
And pieces of glass.
Despite the seeming fragility of glass, Versailles is still standing. The partying monarchy, on the other hand, is long gone. When it came down to kings, parties and glass vs. peasants, the peasants won out.
Shelley’s “Ozymandias” comes to mind. Maybe my father is informing the Eiffel Tower that, despite the power it exudes, it too may go the way of the Sun King’s monarchy. Even steel beams don’t last forever.