From a letter from a friend titled, Letter to our Fate:
Don’t you dare, cruel fate. Stand down. You stay away from my friend, a rare man among the only half, a handful in my entire life whose kindness and sweet-heartedness exceeds all others. A man so loved that the mere mention of his name brings a smile to the lips of those who know him. Get back and stop your torment. S****N is ours, our bulwark, who with good cheer balms our own worries and shields us from lamenting the universe undeniable inevitability. Oh that we cannot comfort him now like he does us. So for now at least you bastard sounding your klaxon, resign yourself to return to the ever present but barely audible background noise of our consciousness, appreciated only by thoughtful men…
And you cruel fate…you will return someday as is your wont, to take both of us. In the grand scheme of things you will not even have to wait very long. But by then my friend and I will both be ready to meet you…with glad hearts.
I have received one other correspondence from the only other friend I’ve fully shared my burden with. His response was in a similar vein, and it occurs to me that I do have stages of grief, rather analogous to those of Kubler-Ross except that they seem to be in reverse. I began with acceptance, transitioned to resignation, flirted with embarrassment, all of which could simply be combined into one stage, in the spirit of Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS); a stage we’ll call the Prufrock stage, from T.S. Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: –a stage from which I’ll be transitioning into my final stage. Rage.
TS Elliot’s Prufrock; or, Dylan Thomas’s Rage, two poets and two poems that I well remember from high school, two of my favorite poems ever, a nexus at which I am where you might even say two roads diverged in a yellow wood. (Obviously, as below, I am plagiarizing R. Frost, which is not plagiarizing, now that he is referenced and credited.)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is one of the greatest poems ever written. It almost reads itself. Once you start reading it, especially out loud, it is like rolling down a hill. Here is part of it:
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
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?
J. Alfred Prufrock is indecisive, uncertain, tentative, afraid. The poem ends with:
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
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.
Prufrock is sorely lacking in self-esteem, perhaps it is more of a self-loathing. It is possible that I’ve recognized certain Prufrockian tendencies in myself ever since Sister Hugo assigned it in senior English; but I didn’t much care for J. Alfred. I knew him once, in another man not me and he didn’t remind me at all of myself; so, why is it that I feel like I have recently become him with my talk of resignation and quiet acquiescence to the Fate’s serving of bitter fruit, which is why, although that is where I stood, I now look down as far as I could to see another road in the yellow wood, a road I think more even fair. So now I’ll leave behind my pity stage of powerlessness for the hot embrace of Dylan Thomas’s rage, rage:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
From Ecclesiastes: To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; but, now is not that time, this is not that time at all. This is not it at all. There will be a time to go gentle into that good night, and that I will do with glad heart; however, as it stands for now, I still must disturb the universe, to squeeze it into a ball and roll it toward some overwhelming question. Therefore, God eternal, I respectfully must rage. I must rage, rage against the dying of your glorious light.