T he Waste Land

Le poème de T.S. Eliot

« Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,      

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many,

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,      

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,      

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours      

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.      

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!      

You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,      

Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?      

Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?      

Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,      

Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

You! hypocrite lecteur! — mon semblable, — mon frère!” »