Prufrocking

'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 to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'

Let us go and make our visit.

...

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet

...

For I have known them already, known them all;

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall,

Beneath the music from a farther room

So how should I presume?

...

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets,

And watch the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of the windows?

...

And I have seen the moments of my greatness flicker

And I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short,

I was afraid.

...

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red & brown,

Till human voices wake us, & we drown.'

Excerpts from 'The Lovesong of J.S. Prufrock' 

T.S. Eliot.

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I love that phrase: 'streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent.' I don't know the exact word to describe the way I feel when I read it, except that it is a pleasant and warm sensation that prickles through me. Strange, the things that poetry can do.

Last week, I was dozing off in a linguistics lecture, and the professor used the word insidious in a statement (which I now forget. It was related to phonetics, or sociolinguistics, or something equally sleep-inducing.) and I immediately snapped to attention. It just reminded me of this very special poem & how it made me feel. I began to smile like a complete goof & my course-mate looked at me like I was completely off my rocker. Like I was mad. 

I continued to smile widely to myself though, because it was all strange and funny and lovely to have this secret connection to a certain word that no one else knew about. Well. Perhaps all aspiring writers are a little mad, inside.