The Dead Leaves
The Dead Leaves - context Summary
Published in Paroles, 1946
This short lyric was published in Prevert’s Paroles (1946). It frames a speaker addressing a former lover and insisting that memories remain despite the slow erasure of shared life. Everyday images like dead leaves, shovelfuls, the north wind and the sea wiping footsteps mark the movement from a warm, vivid past toward cold oblivion. The tone is colloquial and melancholic; the speaker repeats claims of memory, blending regret with a quiet acceptance of separation. Knowing the poem’s placement in Paroles helps readers hear Prevert’s postwar interest in ordinary language and human loss.
Read Complete AnalysesOh, I wish so much you would remember those happy days when we were friends. Life in those times was so much brighter and the sun was hotter than today. Dead leaves picked up by the shovelful. You see, I have not forgotten. Dead leaves picked up by the shovelful, memories and regrets also, and the North wind carries them away into the cold night of oblivion. You see, I have not forgotten the song that you sang for me: It is a song resembling us. We lived together, the both of us, you who loved me and I who loved you. But life drives apart those who love, ever so softly, without a noise, and the sea erases from the sand the steps of lovers gone their ways.
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