EPTBased on The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. by T.S. Eliot
LET us go then, you and I,
When the creep is spread out against the map
And a stalker is parasited upon a ramp;
Let us go, over certain half-developed zerglings,
The gurgling spawn
Of restless nights in one-night cheap bunkers
And cantina restaurants with baneling-shells:
Overlords that scout like a tedious balloon
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our base visit.
In the base the workers come and go
Mining blue minerals aglow.
The purplish creep that spreads its way across the map,
The purplish creep that spreads its tendrils on the base-ramps
Licked its tongue into the corners of the base,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in crevasses,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from factories,
Slipped by the turret, made a sudden tumor,
And seeing that it was a soft Xel’Naga night,
Curled once about the bunker, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the purplish creep that slides across the map,
Rubbing its back upon the base-ramps;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare an army to meet the armies that you meet;
There will be time to cancel and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your mineral line;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred attack timing indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a minerals and gas.
In the base the workers come and go
Mining blue minerals aglow.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and rethink that attack,
With a bald spot in the middle of my mineral patch—
(They will say: “How his mineral patch is growing thin!”)
My slowly growing economy, my army building steady,
Minerals overbalanced, yet my army being built—
(They will say: “But how his minerals and gas are oversaturated!”)
Do I dare
Disturb my macro?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a colossus will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known my armies, swarms, hoards,
I have measured out my life with overlords;
I know the voices dying with a dying squelch
Beneath the invisible blade of a ghost.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, spawning on a map,
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?
And I have known the upgrades already, known them all—
Tunneling claws sharpened and mean
(But when burrowed, invisible without detection!)
Is it poison from a baneling
That makes me so digress?
Overloads that sneak across the way, or drop in a base.
And should I then presume to win?
And how should I begin my counter attack?
. . . . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow choke-points
And watched the sparks that rises from the welding
Of lonely SCVs in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of bunkers?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the creep of silent maps.
. . . . . . . .
And the evening, the night, sleeps so anxiously!
Disoriented by hours of laddering,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the natural, here between your base and me.
Should I, after minerals and gas and larva,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and laddered, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my army (now small, or dead) brought in upon a platter,
I am no Idra—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the revered Tasteless hold my ladder points, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the hours, the practice, the ladder anxiety,
Among the forums, among some talk of Day[9] and chairs,
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed my mouse into a ball
To push it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am ahead in minerals, but have a mined out base;
Come back and build a second, I tell you drone”—
If one, settling on some keys by their left hand,
Should say: “That is not what I meant to hotkey at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the tutorials and the VODs and the strategy guides,
After the threads, after \ discussions, after watching pros destroy some nerds —
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a mighty queen threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or cuddling a Manfred,
And turning toward the chat, should say:
“That is not what I should have built at all,
That is not what I wanted to build, at all.”
. . . . . . . .
No! I am not an Ultralisk, nor was meant to be;
I am an overlord, one that will do
To swell a progress, scout a scene or two,
Advise the queen; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, simple, and grumbling;
Full of high purpose, but a bit slow;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I evolve … I evolve …
I shall morph into a baneling and some marines resolve.
Shall I part my army thus? Do I dare to sneak a roach?
I shall burrow at their ramp, queue up and maybe gloat.
I have heard the Ultras singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them rampaging forward on the creep
Almost trampling the tiny offspring of broodlords.
When the wind blows the hydras dance and preen.
We have lingered on the edges of the map
With AMP so high, our finger flying free
Till a BM message wakes us, and we GG.
