Let Us Go And Make Our Visit

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.*





Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
--T.S. Eliot (from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock )



*If I thought my answer were given
to anyone who would ever return to the world,
this flame would stand still without moving any further.
But since never from this abyss
has anyone ever returned alive, if what I hear is true,
without fear of infamy I answer you.
--Dante Alighieri (from "The Inferno ")


Colorado River at Seventyfive Mile Canyon
pilgrims approaching Hance Rapid
T.S. Eliot reads "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
entering Turquoise Canyon
between Garnet and Royal Arch Canyon
outside Mineral Canyon