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'When I came to Paris I spent the days walking through the streets and districts.
Eventually I worked in Belleville and the Marais. Narrow streets, fallen palaces,
traces of the ghetto and resistance, Arabs, dealers, lovers in darkened rooms,
courtyards filled with dead light.
In the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise amongst replicas of petrified life and enamel
portraits, old people walked between the graves feeding stray cats.
At Batignolles, Verlaine's grave lay forgotten, covered in a light grey sediment from the
motorway above.
However inevitable this condition of things, reflected in the streets and facades, I felt a resonance,
the recognition of a struggle I knew and carried within me. It may only be a bleak hope,
but in this struggle, I believe, lies our dignity.'

London 1978