Quote by Birago Diop: “Listen more often to things rather than beings.”

This is an invitation to a different kind of attention — away from human noise and toward the world itself: wind, water, animals, earth. In West African spiritual traditions, the non-human world carries wisdom and memory. Slowing down enough to listen to it is a form of humility and a way of staying connected to something larger than human concerns.

Diop published his poetry collection Leurres et lueurs in 1960, but 'Souffles' appeared first in earlier publications in the 1940s during the heyday of the Négritude movement. Paris was the intellectual centre of anti-colonial African thought, and thinkers were reaching back to African spiritual traditions as a counter to European rationalism and materialism.

Senegalese poet and short story writer associated with the Négritude movement, best known for his adaptations of West African folk tales and for his poem 'Souffles,' from which this line is drawn. He worked as a veterinarian across West Africa and his literary work was deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the Wolof and other Senegalese cultures.