The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
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,
Sunny Side Down
NOTHING. sitting in a cafe having breakfast. NOTHING. the waitress,
and the people eating. the traffic runs by. doesn’t matter what
Napoleon did, what Plato said. Turgenev could have been a fly. we are worn-
down,
hope stamped out. we reach for coffee cups like the robots about
to replace us. courage at Salerno, bloodbaths on the Eastern front didn’t
matter. we know that we are beaten. NOTHING. now it’s just a matter of
continuing
anyhow—
chew the food and read the paper. we
read about ourselves. the news is
bad. something about
NOTHING.
Joe Louis long dead as the medfly invades Beverly Hills.
well, at least we can sit and
eat. it’s been some rough
trip. it could be
worse. it could be worse than
NOTHING.
let’s get more coffee from the
waitress.
that bitch! she knows we are trying to get her
attention.
she just stands there doing
NOTHING.
it doesn’t matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse
or that the hummingbird is so seldom
seen or that we are too senseless to go
Reklam
