a translation of César Vallejo

Black Stone on a White Stone

I’ll die in Paris while it rains

on a day like any other that I already remember.

I’ll die in Paris—and I won’t run—

maybe on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday,

while I write these lines my bones ache,

and today like never before I return,

with every road I take, to understand how alone I am.

Cesar Vallejo is dead, they all beat him

though he had done nothing to them;

they gave it to him hard with a stick

and hard with a rope: the witnesses

are Thursdays and the bones in his arms,

loneliness, the rain, the roads…