How should I presume?

“… 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?”

Excerpted from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot

One response to “How should I presume?

  1. One of the greatest anti-carpe diem masterpieces…
    The confession of one man’s fear of being trapped within his own inertia while conscious of his impending end. And yet, the larger concern lies in being misinterpreted by his peers; he cannot even adequately convey his sentiment of imprisonment and waste –
    Imagine the loneliness…

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