- Let us go then, you and I,
- When the evening is spread out against the sky
- Like a patient etherized upon a table;
- Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
- The muttering retreats
- Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
- And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
- Streets that follow like a tedious argument
- Of insidious intent
- To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
- Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
- Let us go and make our visit.
- In the room the women come and go
- Talking of Michelangelo.
- The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
- The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
- Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
- Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
- Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
- Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
- And seeing that it was a soft October night,
- Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
- And indeed there will be time
- For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
- Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
- There will be time, there will be time
- To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
- There will be time to murder and create,
- And time for all the works and days of hands
- That lift and drop a question on your plate;
- Time for you and time for me,
- And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
- And for a hundred visions and revisions,
- Before the taking of a toast and tea.
- In the room the women come and go
- Talking of Michelangelo.
- And indeed there will be time
- To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
- Time to turn back and descend the stair,
- With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
- (They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!")
- My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
- My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
- (They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
- Do I dare
- Disturb the universe?
- In a minute there is time
- For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
- For I have known them all already, known them all:
- Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
- I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
- I know the voices dying with a dying fall
- Beneath the music from a farther room.
- So how should I presume?
- And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
- The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
- And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
- When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
- Then how should I begin
- To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
- And how should I presume?
- And I have known the arms already, known them all--
- Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
- (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
- Is it perfume from a dress
- That makes me so digress?
- Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
- And should I then presume?
- And how should I begin?
- Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
- And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
- Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
- I should have been a pair of ragged claws
- Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
* * * - And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
- Smoothed by long fingers,
- Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
- Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
- Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
- Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
- But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
- Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
- I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
- I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
- And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
- And in short, I was afraid.
- And would it have been worth it, after all,
- After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
- Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
- Would it have been worth while,
- To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
- To have squeezed the universe into a ball
- To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
- To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
- Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
- If one, settling a pillow by her head
- Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
- That is not it, at all."
- And would it have been worth it, after all,
- Would it have been worth while,
- After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
- After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
- And this, and so much more?--
- It is impossible to say just what I mean!
- But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
- Would it have been worth while
- If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
- And turning toward the window, should say:
- "That is not it at all,
- That is not what I meant, at all."
- No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
- Am an attendant lord, one that will do
- To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
- Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
- Deferential, glad to be of use,
- Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
- Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
- At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
- Almost, at times, the Fool.
- I grow old ... I grow old ...
- I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
- Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
- I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
- I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
- I do not think that they will sing to me.
- I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
- Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
- When the wind blows the water white and black.
- We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
- By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
- Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock (by T.S. Eliot)
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