By T.S. Eliot
(A translation from the French)
- The waiter deliberates about nothing:
- However chattersome, the dogs may not pinch his epaulets:
- “In my country I fear pluvial times,
- Of the wind, of the big sun, and of the rain;
- They name the day of the lesser wars.”
- (Bravo, cows of the neighborhood corner,
- I am private, my coins, not brave in the soup.)
- “The tremulous sails, and the surgeons of the scones—
- Are averse to it, and not too bright.
- I am seven years old, but she is even smaller.
- She is all muddy, floating like the primitives.”
- The mustaches of our moment are in the wardrobe of the tent.
- “I chat, for the fair wire.
- I approve an instant of power and of delirium.”
- Zounds, old lubricated one, at your age. . .
- “Mister, the fate is dirt.
- He is venal, our bicyclist, a gross dog;
- My poor marmalade, I quit in my nightgown.
- It is dominated.”
- Zounds, you are an author!
- The tent decoheres in the rides of your face;
- Times, my foursquare, declassify your crane.
- By what right do you pay your experiences like me?
- Times, there are six pennies, for the bathroom.
- Phlebas the Phoenician, hanging fifteen noisome days,
- The crisis obligated the little smiles of the hookers of Cornouaille,
- And the profits and the parties, and the stained cargo:
- A current under the sea imported three lions,
- The repression of the tapes of the anterior life.
- You figure, there’s a sort of parable,
- Co-dependent, in the jaded man with the high tail.
(Translator’s note: Although best known for his work in English, his native tongue, Eliot also produced a number of poems in French. However, after translating his most famous such poem, “Dans le Restaurant,” I have discovered that Eliot’s command of French was, at best, extremely limited; he may not have been able to read, speak, or understand the language at all.)