literature

Scrutiny

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Daily Deviation

November 28, 2008
Scrutiny by ~aillesdors is a beautiful, allusive and ambitious poem. I was thrilled to read it!
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Literature Text

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin…

~ T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I am going through the keyless gate
to watch and wait,
to wander here and there among the proud,
among the white and old whose wisdom rots, repressed, untold:
the soporific royals wreathed in leaves of gold.
And to them I shall read aloud from the Book,
read of the sins their lips have took
and upon me they shall look and patiently reflect…

“I am lost in my own depth,” I will say
in a slight, impartial way
(for I lack violets and an antic prince’s love)
and they, floating through their channels deep
dare to drown me in my sleep and in their orisons remember
nothing.

So shall I be a queen bone and ash,
of crawling worms and sullied, melting flesh.
Kissed by death, I shall burn upon a pyre
knowing only distance and desire and, rising from the fire,
I shall step with soft, unfettered feet
toward where the two twin rivers meet
in that vast, fertile crescent land and
I will lay my milky hand upon his brow
whispering “hush now, hush now:”
I will suck his marrow deep, like nectar,
Till he is asleep and cut his hair
and bear his wrath while he is weak.
And having sung the song of sirens I’ll depart
to take up some different, dying art:
Like Lazarus I shall come when I am called
and go where the wildflowers grow,
to know as they know,
waking, watchful and unrested.

(and in thy orisons—)

I am she of the first orchard, gilt in innocence and
ribbed by curiosity: in name, an ending though I am
beginning as a child, clothed in air.
Loved, though imperfect now, in my disgrace:
I am not worthy of him whose face I imitate
or the bone stolen from the First.
I greet them all spread-eagle in a fall
on display for all to see and scrutinize,
to undo me and every flaw.
Something that I wrote after reading T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" and rereading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The style is therefore very Eliot-esque and the whole thing is very cryptic - I'M still trying to figure out what it all means.

The epigraph is also from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and it deals with much the same stuff that Prufrock does.
Comments131
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KlickBang's avatar
I understand it. Your references of women strong, and fragile. Who bring men down from the wall, disarm them before they submit. Dangerous and special is this poetry...