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Sonnet For Alexandra "Xie" Kitchin Cardew
[29 September 1864 – 6 April 1925]
When photographed in 1923,
did you, perhaps, think of that earlier
friend (older than you were; photographer---
professor of mathematics---bachelor)?
His final pictures of your adolescence
(before the time of quiet hostility)
preserved your beauty past the evanescence
of ordinary human memory.
Alice well understood how you were favored
(although the fact is not one she has savored).
She barks about it like a terrier
courageous when behind a high, stone fence:
wroth that she cannot injure or deter
your courteous, serene indifference.
Starward
[jlc]
