Mark

As in “Çi gist” (”Here lies…”) which has become “Çi gît’.

Other examples (for other vowels) are 

Prestre : Prêtre (interestingly, in English there’s an archaic word “Prester”, as in ‘Prester John’, which has the same root, and of course ‘priest’, which still has the ’s’).

Chastel : Chasteau : Château (which has clearly morphed a few times since its Latin beginnings as castellum. Again, there’s the English word ‘castle’… in which we still have both the ’s’ and the ‘l’).

There you go… more than you could ever have wanted to know about circumflexes!

Since English is not my mother tongue I had to look up the meaning of ‘gist’.
Did you know it actually comes from old French? It’s the third person singular present tense of the verb ‘gésir’ (to lie, as in laying on the floor).
I knew I liked your haiku for good reasons ;-)

Hubert

PS: If I were to do one myself (which will never happen given my skills) I’d write something like: Liberty, Equality, Centricity :-)