Leave me here, my good friends—
even if I had been looking for it, I would not have found this place
which by accident I discovered.
Leave me here among these heavy stones,
that I may make the House of Slaves one more stone higher.
That the sound of the tom-tom may carry me across the Gambia and Congo Rivers,
and up across the Niger to the Land of the Dogons;
that the young Signares may lull me to sleep with their songs,
and that, sleeping, I may dream of a never-passing youth.
That in the blue eyes of the dark-cheeked Signares
the blue sky of my homeland may rise.

And that, when the tom-tom lures out the hivernage,
the song of the rains may be a song of universal birth.
And that I—a stone lifted onto the House of Slaves
and dizzy from the height—
may dive with this song and disappear into the beauty.