The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Completed

Sometimes there are just things that resonate with your deep-down soul. Such is T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to me. It sings of both hesitation to embrace what is truly beautiful and a painful awareness of plastic societal demands. Uncertainty underlies every decision. The desperate feeling after the realm of the beautiful is sobered by demands of a world of constant misunderstanding, shallow relationships, and the continual passing of time. What follows is my attempt at capturing the essence of this poem, and hopefully express in ways that words cannot a glimpse of that deeper something.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

Among some talk of you and me

Prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet

Do I dare disturb the universe?

How do I begin to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas

I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think they will sing to me.