This varnished box shows nothing that protrudes, only a knob to turn to the next click, so that quite soon many little aluminum skyscrapers light up weakly within, while savage shoutings spurt contending for our attention.

A little apparatus with a wonderful ‘selectivity’. Ah, how ingenious it is to have refined the ear to this point. Why? To pour into it incessantly the most outrageous vulgarities.

All the foment of dung of the world’s melody.

Ah well, that’s what’s best, after all. The dung must be brought out and spread in the sun: such a flood sometimes fertilizes . . .

However, with a hurried step, return to the box, to sum up.

held in high esteem in every house these last years – plonked right in the middle of the parlour, all windows open – the buzzing, beaming little second garbage bin!

(Francis Ponge, trans. John Montague.)