To Prufrock

 

Image Source: Freepik 


To Prufrock

 

He sits across the table
Staring deep into his coffee cup,
Counting every stir of his spoon.
I look at him as he focuses on his coffee,
Considering.
Deliberating.
 
He is lean and fair,
With honest eyes
Lost in some otherworldly thought,
His mind calculating some complexity.
Something bothers him-
Causing him to avert his eyes
To his empty palms on his lap,
or to the wall behind me.
Something that causes him to look everywhere,
But directly into my eyes
And reveal truths that flicker just beneath;
Something that unconsciously
Brings him to run his fingers through his hair,
As though wanting
To hide a part of himself
From wicked eyes that yearn to devour.
 
What is it 
That makes you so digress? 
What is it 
That holds you back,
The question dancing right at the tip of your tongue,
Waiting to slip right out
And exist in the silence before us?

Desire stirs, yet dies unclaimed,
I feel it, sharp, the pulse beneath,
A heat suppressed, like embers low.
Your gaze, that slips, both drawn and tamed,
Hints at worlds you’ve hidden away.
I linger here, 
Beneath the weight of what you’ll never show.

After all the evenings, mornings, and afternoons,
The cups, the marmalade, the teas and the cakes,
Unnumbered dinners at cheap sawdust restaurants,
And endless suggestions 
Of the possibility 
Of You and Me,
I look longingly at you descending the stairs,
Modest, measured, anxious.
I wait in expectation, 
Waiting for you to spring the question. 

I’ll wait
For the sweet moment.
That sweet, triumphant moment 
When you let go of your inhibitions, 
Slip away from the stronghold of your thoughts, 
Tip-toe around the monster of your fears, 
And look for me, 
Only to realize I have been with you in every breath. 

I know the pause, the stillness in your eyes
I do not judge, nor do I seek to pry—
I simply wait, and give you time to untangle
What knots you have in your chest.
Wander through your labyrinth, 
And when you’re through, 
You’ll find me there waiting, 
As constant as the tide,
Until the truth, like light, breaks through the shade,
And in that moment, all will be unmade.

About the poem: 

This blog contains a poem based on TS Elliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. While the original poem is from the perspective of Prufrock, this present version is from the lady love’s perspective. This blog is the fruit of wondering how the woman would have responded to Prufrock’s constant self-doubt and hesitation. The poem is a generative text, i.e., it has parts which have been written in collaboration with AI. For this, the AI model was instructed to work as a prompt generator, creating prompts in the style of T.S. Eliot. It was instructed to generate 4 prompts for each query and one of these 4 were selected and incorporated into the poem. By using a mix of generative texts and human-generated lines, an attempt has been made to envision the mental landscape of the woman in Prufrock. The poem was originally written in English and does not have any specific technical requirements for experiencing. 

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