WEBVTT

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And this is called
"The Matriarch"

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and I have something I
want to say about that.

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That Professor Robbins
has been telling me

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about the bees, the honeybees.

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They are dying
all over the world

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and perhaps the
honeybee population has

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been reduced by half, he says.

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Terrible thing to contemplate.

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And working bees push the
drones out of the hive

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after the queen has
been fertilized.

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And since they've been cared
for until this time, why,

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it's likely that they
don't survive long.

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And the male bee, the king, also
dies in the marriage flight.

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And it's called "The Matriarch."

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It's about bees.

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A queen in the
heaven of her reign

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lies on the matron's
honeyed bed.

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Her swains who beat the
gauzy heir to wed her,

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tattered in love's wear,
are swept from the hive

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or cruelly slain.

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While he who
entered her is dead,

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ripped in the pitch
of his queen's loins

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with the murmuring kingdom bred.

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A queen housed in her royal
cell, fed mead of clover,

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foxgloved spice, aromatics
chewed more than twice

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by inexorable law must dwell.

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Her watchful ladies
mix her food.

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She swells the ranks
of the burnished brood.

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A queen who burned and
charged the sun, charged comet

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with a tail of drones, is a
bellied, fat, and wingless

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thing upon her stroked
and tended couch.

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A mighty sightless breeding one
where wax hexagonals of thrones

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entomb the matriarch.

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The king, in parts,
fell through the air

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he trimmed, dangled and
dragged his most prized pouch.

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Deaf to the chorus
he had hymned.

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