Prufrock’s Pervigilium

Lyrics

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets   And seen the smoke which rises from the pipes   Of lonely men in shirtsleeves, leaning out of windows.   And when the evening woke and stared into its blindness I heard the children whimpering in corners  Where women took the air, standing in entries— Women, spilling out of corsets, stood in entries Where the draughty gas-jet flickered And the oil cloth curled up stairs. And when the evening fought itself awake And the world was peeling oranges and reading evening papers And boys were smoking cigarettes, drifted helplessly together In the fan of light spread out by the drugstore on the corner Then I have gone at night through narrow streets,    Where evil houses leaning all together  Pointed a ribald finger at me in the darkness Whispering all together, chuckled at me in the dark- ness. And when the midnight turned and writhed in fever I tossed the blankets back, to watch the darkness Crawling among the papers on the table  It leapt to the floor and made a sudden hiss And darted stealthily across the wall Flattened itself upon the ceiling overhead Stretched out its tentacles, prepared to leap And when the dawn at length had realized itself   And turned with a sense of nausea, to see what it had stirred: The eyes and feet of men— I fumbled to the window to experience the world And to hear my Madness singing, sitting on the kerbstone [A blind old drunken man who sings and mutters, With broken boot heels stained in many gutters] And as he sang the world began to fall apart . . .   I should have been a pair of ragged claws   Scuttling across the floors of silent seas . . .  —I have seen the darkness creep along the wall  I have heard my Madness chatter before day I have seen the world roll up into a ball Then suddenly dissolve and fall away.