In "The Waste Land," there is a line that reminds me of a few things, amongst them, is a picture from National Geographic many years ago of a train station platform in India. I tried to look it up online, as I do not have the magazines currently at my disposal, but it left an indelible image on my mind. It is a busy platform (perhaps in Dehli?), filled with commuters packed into a train, blurred by motion. In the foreground, the corpse of a man is on the ground, passed by without even a single person looking down. Eliot describes the commuters going to work in London,
Unreal City, | 60 |
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. |
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