My Lovesong to Eliot

Having just read my sister-in-law's blog about her favorite poem, I find that I have to copy her. Initially, I tend to be a fairly lazy reader--it takes a really compelling story or very interesting characters to get me to read "lyrical" prose. And poetry? I don't think I've read much since I graduated from college 15 years ago. But there is one poem that I do remember. And return to again and again. It is very famous; I studied it in high school, and in both my American and English Literature classes (those darn expatriots).
"The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"
It has lines like:

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned, and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-end of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

and

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After all the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say, "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant at all,
That is not it, at all."

I don't mean to be melodramatic, but I have occasionally sensed this emptiness and uselessness and impotence in my life. (I think it's called being human.) In general, I am happy and feel great, but there are times when I feel so misunderstood and incapable of articulation and simply invisible. This poem just seems to capture all those sentiments and the absurdities that accompany them.