The title of tonight's entry comes from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by the always brilliant, ever-perplexing T.S. Eliot, truly one of the greatest poets ever to live. Of his many poems, "Prufrock" is my favourite; I empathise with poor Mr. Prufrock, who is tortured by indecision and self-doubt in the barren killing-fields of Romance, that cruel tyrant of the emotions who claims multitudes of victims guilty of naught but hope and idealism. Ah, Love—truly, thou art the embodiment of the Agony and the Ecstasy—how wonderful and how terrible thou canst be; thy works are sublimity, yet so many fall prey to thee, mere casualties to thy depredation and malice.

Tonight storm clouds descend on the world, skulking in the battered skies, livid bruises defacing the delicate ether; in stark contrast to the looming heavens, flouting the tempestuous contusions, an obelisk juts into the brooding night. Tomorrow it shall likely rain, and all the sins of the world be washed away with raindrop zealots sacrificing themselves on the vast altar of the earth.

Some shrouded figures, swathed in waterproofed swaddling clothes, shall bend against the howling winds—mournful banshees who lament the death of sunlight and cheer—and curse the driving rains. I, however, shall revel in the bitter barrage, shall cherish the invigorating embrace of that hyperborean hail. O Empyrean Emperor, ruler of all the celestial sphere, grant me clouds to blot out that gaudy despot of the day, and gloom to obscure this world of atrocity and arrogance; plunge the iniquities of humankind into shadow, and allow darkness—aye, that blissful penumbra of Truth—to fall upon the world.

[Edit: Curse this unpredictable California weather—it was bloody sunny today! There goes the poignancy of my entire post. Oy vey.]

[Exit Orpheum.]

                          1
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
  Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
  By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
  Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
    Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
  For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
    And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

                          2
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
  Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
  And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on the morning rose,
  Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
    Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
  Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
    And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

                          3
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
  And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
  Turning to poison while the bee-moth sips;
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
  Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
    Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
  Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
    And be among her cloudy trophies hung.