by César Vallejo
I will die in Paris with hard dirty rain,
on a day I now remember.
I will die in Paris – and I don’t run –
maybe a Thursday, like today, in autumn.
Thursday, because today, Thursday, when I prose
these lines, I have forced my humeri on
unwillingly and, never like today have I again,
with all my road, seen myself alone.
César Vallejo is dead, they beat him,
everyone, without him doing anything to them;
they hit him hard with a stick and hard
likewise with a rope; witnesses are
the Thursdays and the humerus bones,
the loneliness, the rain, the roads. . .
-from Human Poems, translated by Clayton Eshleman