One day earlier this week, I spent an hour by myself at lunch, enjoying Panera Bread, savoring the sun and digesting good poetry. Compared to the boring meetings I’d been stuck in all week, this hour alone was like a small taste of heaven. For some reason this morning on the way out the door, I grabbed a small collection of poems by T.S. Eliot for reading if the occasion arose. I had to read T.S. Eliot a few years back, and found myself entranced with the beauty of the language that he used—but completely lost as to what he meant. I would catch these glimpses of images, but they were transient and ethereal images, fading away as quickly as they materialized in my mind. At the time, I was in class with people a year ahead of me, people who seemed to be such experts at understanding all things lofty, who left me feeling ignorant and inadequate.

Perhaps it was because I was feeling lethargic and a bit trapped because of the meetings I’d been in all day or perhaps it was the romantic notion of eating lunch by myself in front of a book of poetry, but for some reason, I found myself caught up in Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

The copy of T.S. Eliot poems that I have is an older edition, one that I bought at a used bookstore (Beers of Sacramento—best used bookstore in town). I love used books, especially ones that were previously owned by intelligent people, people who took note of their intelligent thoughts in the margins!

It’s a long poem, one that most of you do not want to read. But let me share just a few pieces.

He begins with this image:

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 questions…
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’
Let us go and make our visit.