The Waste Land

Photo: Radio Canada

   What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

 

From T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)[1]

---

[1] T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” in T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971), pp. 37-50.  See lines 367-377 on p. 48.