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?
— T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

One ought to read this entire poem, at least once or twice, and maybe thrice. Make that a surely thrice and we’re on the right track. Prufrock changes as we ourselves change. And poetry reveals itself to the persistent reader. Or like buried treasure it hides just below the surface, stubbornly holding on to its mysterious blanket. We are not meant to know everything, but we may know some things in a lifetime. If we dare go to the trouble.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

We hear the mermaids but are chagrined knowing that they aren’t talking to us. It’s far easier to be eavesdroppers on the lives of others. ’tis far better to seek out the voices that call to us, and try to find them before our time runs out.

The lesson of Prufrock, I believe it to be so, is for us to be bold today. It doesn’t matter about the weather or the quiet timidity of our rhythm and routine. Now is our only chance. Yes, believe it to be so and then do what must be done,