In Memoriam by Léopold Sédar Senghor,

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It is Sunday.

I fear the crowd of my brothers with stony faces.

From my tower of glass filled with pain, the nagging Ancestors

I gaze at roofs and hills in the fog

In the silence – the chimneys are grave and bare.

At their feet sleep my dead, all my dreams are dust

All my dreams, the liberal blood spills all along the streets, mixing with the blood of the butcheries.

And now, from this observatory as from a suburb

I watch my dreams float vaguely through the streets, lie at the hills’ feet

Like the guides of my race on the banks of Gambia or Saloum,

Now of the Seine, at the feet of these hills.

Let me think of my dead!

Yesterday it was Toussaint, the solemn anniversary of the sun

And no remembrance in any cemetery.

Ah, dead ones who have always refused to die, who have known how to fight death

By Seine or Sine, and in my fragile veins pushed the invincible blood,

Protect my dreams as you have made your sons, wanderers on delicate feet.

Oh Dead, protect the roofs of Paris in the Sunday fog

The roofs which guard my dead

That from the perilous safety of my tower I may descend to the streets

To join my brothers with blue eyes

With hard hands.