THE DAILY VIEW: "In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo"

"In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo" -- collage by Lou Gold     


The title is a line from a great TS Eliot poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". After Obama's recent dreadful decision to do nothing on ozone pollution and smog and his persistent backing down on the environment, Prufrock's lament (written in 1920) seems to fit almost too perfectly...

Here's an excerpt:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Read the full poem.