Alice grown lazy, mammoth but not fat, <br />Declines upon her lost and twilight age; <br />Above in the dozing leaves the grinning cat <br />Quivers forever with his abstract rage: <br /> <br />Whatever light swayed on the perilous gate <br />Forever sways, nor will the arching grass, <br />Caught when the world clattered, undulate <br />In the deep suspension of the looking-glass. <br /> <br />Bright Alice! always pondering to gloze <br />The spoiled cruelty she had meant to say <br />Gazes learnedly down her airy nose <br />At nothing, nothing thinking all the day. <br /> <br />Turned absent-minded by infinity <br />She cannot move unless her double move, <br />The All-Alice of the world's entity <br />Smashed in the anger of her hopeless love, <br /> <br />Love for herself who, as an earthly twain, <br />Pouted to join her two in a sweet one; <br />No more the second lips to kiss in vain <br />The first she broke, plunged through the glass alone— <br /> <br />Alone to the weight of impassivity, <br />Incest of spirit, theorem of desire, <br />Without will as chalky cliffs by the sea <br />Empty as the bodiless flesh of fire: <br /> <br />All space, that heaven is a dayless night, <br />A nightless day driven by perfect lust <br />For vacancy, in which her bored eyesight <br />Stares at the drowsy cubes of human dust. <br /> <br />—We too back to the world shall never pass <br />Through the shattered door, a dumb shade-harried crowd <br />Being all infinite, function depth and mass <br />Without figure, a mathematical shroud <br /> <br />Hurled at the air—blessed without sin! <br />O God of our flesh, return us to Your wrath, <br />Let us be evil could we enter in <br />Your grace, and falter on the stony path!<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/last-days-of-alice/
