The best place to find a copy of the poem is Bartleby. I thought I could copy it onto this entry, but no such luck. Either it is not possible, or it requires a skill beyond me. I suspect one reason I have been hesitant to continue is that my understanding begins to break down after the encounter Prufrock has with the "lady."
As in some current TV shows, here is what happened last time: Prufrock presumably leaves his "one-night cheap hotel" and walks through the fog-filled, dirty streets to the house where the "lady" or women await. Many readers assume it is a house of ill-repute, though at this point I prefer that the nature of the house remain ambiguous. That sexual gratification is a goal of the journey seems relatively clear. The body, after all, has its needs. So Prufrock moves through the streets to the house while thinking about himself and the implications of living in such a world as he finds himself in. Prufrock enters the house and climbs the stairs to the room where the woman waits. As he climbs the stairs, he thinks about his physical appearance and why women may not be attracted to him. The experience of rejection is one we all know and can sympathize with:
Even asking a woman to dance can be an experience fraught with peril. You have to cross a certain space to get to her. She sees you coming and looks away. Do you dare to keep on going to her. You are aware that you are getting older, probably 30 here. As a physical specimen you know you aren't much: you are starting to show signs of baldness; you are aware that your "arms and legs" are thin, suggesting a certain weakness. Your clothes suggest a certain fussiness and particularity in dress, something of which you may be inordinately proud. The irony of the situation does not seem to be lost on Prufrock: "Do I dare/Disturb the universe?/In a minute there is time/For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
In an earlier time one's actions had repercussions throughout the world one inhabited, think Lear, or Macbeth, or Hamlet, or Oedipus. In the modern world acting significantly seems a travesty, a joke, and Prufrock's mind immediately moves to the "because," "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;"
Prufrock is convinced that life holds no surprises, there is nothing new under the sun, so to speak, and then he gives us that marvelous and unforgettable image of measuring out his life with coffee spoons, diminishing himself in the process. Having shrunken his own significance to the size of the image, he turns to enumerating his knowledge of the others, the women who make up the content of his life.
The one thing that Prufrock does not seem to know is that the human self is a mystery, and wouldn't it be good if Prufrock's journey were moving to that realization? Hmmm.
At this point in the journey Prufrock is telling himself, "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-ends of my days and ways?/ And how should I presume?"
When women look at you like this, how on earth can you summon the courage to act? His point is that he knows his world and the women in it, he knows their voices in this social situation, he knows their eyes and the terribly reductive way they have of making him/you into an insect in a collection, an object for pleasure or contempt. So, he asks, how should he presume to act in this context. If love is not real, then a love relationship is not really possible. So,
He knows the voices, he knows the eyes (shudder), he knows the arms, or does he?
"And I have known the arms already, known them all---/Arms that are braceleted and white and bare/(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)" Note the parenthetical insertion. Something breaks into Prufrock's mind and consciousness that he had not anticipated. He and the exterior world become focused for a moment, and the questions change:
"Is it perfume from a dress/That makes me so digress? /Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl./ And should I then presume?/And how should I begin?" It seems clear to me at this point that there is a real woman present, a woman whose presence and loveliness provoke him into considering how to begin a real relationship or an attempt at one: the question he now considers is one anyone might: "And how should I begin?" Whew! The next five lines are set apart, and that is the focusing for a moment of the possible beginning! "Shall I say..." Think about it, it is such a wonderful poem!
The young woman in the picture is Amaira Salamanca, the starring actress in the Spanish "tela novela," The Grand Hotel, which you can watch on Netflix, all 66 episodes. (We did. Ha. It's sort of a Spanish equivalent of Downton Abbey. Quite entertaining.)