Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

This section is the shortest in this already short narrative poem; it doesn’t deserve any note by Eliot. It belongs to a previous poem of his, written in French: Dans le Restaurant. Phlebas is a character that is alluded to in several fragments of the poem, the Phoenician sailor or Mr. Eugenides, the topic is death, and the end of the fragment is a warning to the reader: “Oh you who turn the wheel…” because life is inevitably followed by death.

Las Arenas, Valencia. Portrait of a kind stranger.