The Champ de Mars of the Damned
I hate the Trocadéro,
symbol of a world that ignores me.
The Eiffel Tower has never dazzled me;
it sparkles above misery,
above empty bellies and torn pockets.
On the Champ de Mars,
I see only cannibal rats,
reflections of men consumed by hunger,
forced smiles before silent despair.
I am an undocumented immigrant,
condemned to live without a name, without rights, without rest.
I will never be a tourist,
for I know the reverse side of their postcards.
When my eyes rise toward the Eiffel Tower,
I see only the bars of human zoos,
where once our ancestors were displayed,
and where we are still observed,
as relics of a foreign humanity.
I dwell in a decaying building,
a refuge for souls dazed by overcrowding,
where the walls ooze mold,
and the pipes carry the limestone of shame.
While migrants drown in the Mediterranean,
it is the filth of others my toilets regurgitate.
I tell myself the sea and my latrines
share the same memory:
that of our rejected bodies.
Too much ugliness adorns my daily life,
too much ugliness lives in their gaze.
I have slept under bridges, fled without papers,
like millions of erased foreigners,
by the scornful silence of Western nations.
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