Sunday, October 17, 2010

Sunday Verse: César Vallejo (1892-1938)

Black Stone Lying On A White Stone


   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. . .

~ by César Vallejo
translated by Robert Bly

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