Black Stone Lying On A White Stone

César Vallejo – 1892-1938

    I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,
on some day I can already remember.
I will die in Paris—and I don’t step aside—
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.

    It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday, setting down
these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on
wrong, and never so much as today have I found myself
with all the road ahead of me, alone.

    César Vallejo is dead.  Everyone beat him
although he never does anything to them;
they beat him hard with a stick and hard also

    with a rope.  These are the witnesses:
the Thursdays, and the bones of my arms,
the solitude, and the rain, and the roads. . .