Ni Dieu ni maître [English translation]

The cigarette1, without a tie2

We smoke at the democratic dawn3

And the remorse of the capital punishment

With the fear that tends its paw

The ministry of the priest

And pity from the window4

And the customer5 who has perhaps

No gods, no masters6

The pallid load that is wrapped7

As a package to the stars

Falling cold on the slab

And this rose without petals

This lawyer with his briefcase

The dawn that puts a veil

For tears that may have

No gods, no masters

These woods that are said to be of justice8

And that grow in tortures

And to furnish the sacrifice

With the fir for the service9

This procedure which watches

Those whom society rejects

Under the pretext that they may have

No gods, no masters

This gospel truth

Who bends fools

And that puts in civil horror

Of the nobility and then the style

This cry which has no rosette10

The word of the prophet

I claim it and wish you

No gods, no masters

1. The last cigarette of the man before his death.2. A prisoner is not allowed to have a tie.3. Executions occured at dawn.4. Spectators have pity5. The customer is the man who will die.6. This is the translation from Wikipedia in English, of this anarchist slogan coined by the socialist Louis Auguste Blanqui in 1880.7. The body.8. The woods of the guillotine.9. Fir is the wood of a cheap coffin.10. The Rosette of the order of the Légion d'honneur. The prisonner was not from the elite.

• Artist:Léo Ferré