She’s She, and I’m I
A looking-glass poem after Lewis Carroll: 15 lines read down and then up around 5 palindromes, with the poem itself behind the middle one. Carroll: “as she couldn’t answer either question, it didn’t much matter which way she put it.”
A woman has fallen, and 2 voices dispute whether she has landed. The poem is a reverso: 15 lines read down, then the same 15 read up, with no word changed. Read down, each consolation is refused; read up, each despair is; 3 verdicts are refused both ways.
A claim standing at the left margin is asserted, and a claim hung from the line above it is denied by that line. The lines are numbered 1 to 15 on the way down and 15 to 1 on the way back, so a number names the same line on both sides of the glass. Between the stanzas stand 5 palindromes, which read the same from either side.
The title, both epigraphs, the fall, and the locked doors are Lewis Carroll’s, from the first 2 chapters of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The middle line opens.
I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think—
1. She is still falling
2. Do not tell me / 3. She landed
4. Nothing broke her fall
5. Who told you / 6. She got to her feet
7. Every door she tried was locked
8. It would be a lie to say / 9. The hole was a kindness
10. Who could believe / 11. She chose this
12. Do not pretend / 13. She was never lost
14. Nobody should say / 15. She came through
Drawn inward
Never ajar even
I saw I was I
Ever ajar Eve
Drawn Edenward
15. She came through
14. Nobody should say / 13. She was never lost
12. Do not pretend / 11. She chose this
10. Who could believe / 9. The hole was a kindness
8. It would be a lie to say / 7. Every door she tried was locked
6. She got to her feet
5. Who told you / 4. Nothing broke her fall
3. She landed
2. Do not tell me / 1. She is still falling
However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about 15 inches high…