Love Songs and Poems

I developed my love of picture books from my mother, who would sit for hours with all five of us curled around her. I still remember snuggling up to her on the living room couch while she would read the stories until she fell asleep. And we always woke her, prodded her on with the next sentence. Exhausted and sleep-deprived as she was, she always continued reading. I love her for that.

So I loved picture books because of my mother but I loved poetry because of my father. Dad was always reading bits of poetry out to us. As I've mentioned before The Raven was a favorite. The Jabberwacky for humor or the wonderful Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service (which most of us kids can quote, at least the start). He read us The Twins although the author always escapes me about a case of mistaken identity. And one of the other ones he would throw out often was this line. "Let us go then, you and I. When evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table." With him as a doctor it made sense to us but it would take me years before I was brave enough to tackle T.S. Eliot's greatest poem. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".

I knew the first lines by heart and by the age of 12 I could recite the entire first stanza. This was still before reading the poem in full. Nowdays I can't think the words "let's go" without that poem popping to mind. Jeff has even started quoting the first couple lines even though he's never read the full poem. So for this Poetry Friday and for my father, I present a part of the poem in all its middle-aged, indecisive, awkwardness. It's a poem that I learned to recite before I learned to love it. It's long, I'll warn you, so I won't post the whole thing here. You can read it in full here. And I recommend, if you haven't read it, to try it. You be surprised by how many references from this you have heard before. (measured out my life in coffee spoons, Do I dare to eat a peach)

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.