the sign reads as I descend into
these tunnels whose walls
are stacks of skulls and bones.
Six million Parisians exhumed
in the eighteenth century
generation upon generation
from overflowing cemeteries.
Good or evil, male or female,
aristocrat or artisan, everyone
in this underworld has obtained
an undignified égalité.
I could laugh myself to scorn
at this human scrapyard
this dump of old bones
with not a ghost in sight!
Back in the land of the living,
I emerge into the rush hour,
the busy throngs of stick people
all with the same destination.