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

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