A Poem by Adam Lambdin
Moving from inferno to mountain we surmount to gain heights
In a wilderness that calls us forward. (Dante 7)
But city is natural to sinner as ocean were to mermaids.
Am I justified in changing this, Mr. Prufrock?
If the damned answered Dante in a moment of candor,
Can a saint answer one from tepid life in
A wilderness where souls are brought back to life
through suffering and strife? (Dante 7)
I have wanted your life, my friend! To break things down
and take my time to understand. But every complicated system has chaotic glitches,
and I have had a few of my own.
You are well-known. And I feel your surrender to inactivity and lack. Does it matter?
What if I do not act? Modern angst yields to post-modern eclectic stress. Are we come
of age or not as yet?
In this life we all lose. I once served myself by failing as well as I could, but then I failed on
purpose and found things new. By granular steps I have gone from inadequacy to
another loss. I have lost myself in those eager steps to her who in turn has lost herself in
Disillusionment is still a fee, but I am that to me. I have lost myself and threw the key. And
now I serve not one but those like thee.
If I meet you, Prufrock, on those yellow streets and find our lives are almost over. (Eliot)
Did you find redemption in that speculation? You seemed contemplative and that is
your right, but “death to self” cry those who meet with grace. Embodied, she too was
there for you. Did you find her in your embrace?
Yet as Valhalla is destined for destruction, we are destined for the grave. Just as Latimer
said to play the man, we are working to ascend that wilderness mount. (Dnate 7) This is
our plan: Lose each breath as best we can, but it is God’s to end or reform again, not for
alluring fantasies to take us, but for God to wake us, lest we drown. (Eliot)
Reflection:
I took my departure point from T.S. Eliot’s poem at the beginning and the end. Throughout the middle, I tried to reflect a different course of action from a different time. We are no longer modern, but post-modern. That is part of it. But I am not just relating to the post-modern and modern dilemmas of disconnection and self-doubt and meaning in love and in social contexts. I do that, but I am trying offer the alternative as I myself have experienced it. T.S. Eliot seems to project hopes for the ideal and the unadulterated feminine allure with his use of mermaids. I contrast that contrived ideal with God waking us from sleep (false ideals) lest we drown spiritually as opposed to drowning coming inevitably upon waking per Eliot’s last lines. His view is cynical.
I did also contrast modern angst with post-modern eclectic stress. It seems that the moderns were disillusioned with the industrial might and its effects on warfare and feelings of isolation. Post-Moderns, which I take to be contemporary persons in our day, feel isolated and individualistic. There is no need to conform to social standards as if that were a virtue that might have existed back in the modern era. Now, all our post-modern entertainment and social media is based on self-expression and breaking barriers. For example, not only is our personal lives on display on social media, but our entertainment often illustrates youth as needing to break free of barriers brought on by their “backwards” parents, most often centered around a father figure who is “fearful.” Hierarchy is a bad thing and conforming to expected standards is bad also. But we are still not free and happy in the least!
Eliot starts with a quote in Latin from Dante’s Inferno, which lines are taken from the momentary candor of a damned sinner. I don’t quote “Purgatory,” but I move from damned condition in Hell to a saintly progression of learning obedience and sanctification in a provisional “Purgatory” (which is Dante’s second book of the three-part series from the Middle Ages),” here on earth. As a qualifier, I personally do not believe in purgatory, but I believe that life is like the fictional place of purgatory only in the sense that we learn growth and obedience through the things that we “suffer.” My hope, as a believer, who has many of the same contemporary struggles that we all do, is to embrace grace, which can be personified as my wife, who I have embraced as I have grace so that I can live not for unrealized, unattainable ideals, but so that I can die to self and live for her/others.
What really struck me about my own response was how polemical it was. I do admire T.S. Eliot. He really captures a lot of the modern zeitgeist, especially in this poem to which I am above responding. I suppose that it is hard to be a devoted follower of Jesus and not be somewhat polemical, as much as I admire Eliot. I think that the old saying that we are “in the world but not of it” rings true. I also think that it is common for the common man to grasp Christian things a lot better than the upper class, wealthy, or famous. Ironically, that was true in Jesus’ day. It tended to be common people who sincerely came to Him, though most of them still shouted, “crucify Him!” This relates because while Prufrock is so brilliantly incapable of breaking the ice with this beautiful girl, a common guy like me, the speaker in my own responsive poem, is already married with a lot of “chaotic glitches” of my own throughout life. I don’t measure things in coffee spoons, I just sort of trip and totter through life with my daughter’s tea-cups and coffee-spoons scattered across the kitchen floor! Being a DD-214 graduate, I am less self-conscious, and that relates to my strong concept of grace perhaps.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy, Vol. 2. Trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. New York: Bigelow, Smith and Co. 1909.
Eliot, T.S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” PoetryFoundation.Org. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock Accessed on May 9th, 2025
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