I will die in Paris on a day of torrential rain,
a day I can somehow already recall.
I will die in Paris —I don’t flinch at the thought—
perhaps on a Thursday, like today, in the Fall.
It will be a Thursday, because today —Thursday— as I write
these very lines, my arms ache to the bone,
and never before, in all my travels,
have I felt so alone.
César Vallejo is dead; they all used to beat him
even though he never did them any harm;
they’d hit him hard with sticks and hard
with thick ropes, too; the Thursdays
each a witness, as are the bones in his arms,
the loneliness, the rain, the roads…
Translated from the Spanish by Ashley Howerton