Translation ;) Dans le Restaurant The waiter idle and dilapidated With nothing to do but scratch and lean over my shoulder Says: "In my country the rain is colder And the sun hotter and the ground more desiccated and desecrated". Voluminous and spuminous with a leguminous and cannimaculated vest-front and pantfront and a graveyperpulchafied yesterdays napkin in a loop over his elbow (I hope he will not sputter into the soup) "Down in a ditch under the willow trees Where you go to get out of the rain I tried in vain, I mean I was interrupted She was all wet with the deluge and her calico skirt stuck to her buttocks and belly, I put my hand up and she giggled", You old cut-up, "At the age of eight what can one do, sir, she was younger Besides I'd no sooner got started than a big poodle Came sniffing about and scared me pealess", Your head is not flealess now at any rate, go scrape the cheese off your pate and dig the slush out of your crowsfeet, take sixpence and get washed, God damn what a fate You crapulous vapulous relic, you ambulating offence To have had an experience so nearly parallel, with, . . . . Go away, I was about to say mine, I shall dine elsewhere in future, to cleanse this suture. Phlebas the Phenicien, fairest of men, Straight and tall, having been born in a caul Lost luck at forty, and lay drowned Two long weeks in sea water, tossed of the streams under sea, carried of currents Forgetful of the gains forgetful of the long days of sea fare Forgetful of mew's crying and the foam swept coast of Cornwall, Born back at last, after days to the ports and stays of his young life, A fair man, ports of his former seafare thither at last The final part of Dans le Restaurant is particularly interesting for Eliot fans, because it is recognisably an early version of "Death by Water", the fourth part of The Waste Land. The French goes thus: Phlébas, le Phénicien, pendant quinze jours noyé, Oubliait les cris des mouettes et la houle de Cornouaille, Et les profits et les pertes, et la cargaison d’étain: Un courant de sous-mer l’emporta très loin, Le repassant aux étapes de sa vie antérieure. Figurez-vous donc, c’était un sort pénible; Cependant, ce fut jadis un bel homme, de haute taille. In more literal English than that of Pound, the connection with The Waste Land becomes even more apparent: Phlebas the Phoenician, drowned a fortnight since, Forgot the cries of gulls and the Cornish sea-swell, And the profits and the losses, and the cargo of tin; A current under sea took him very far away, Took him back through the stages of his former life. You can imagine, it was a painful fate; Even so, he was once a handsome man, and tall.