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.
Feb 17, 2019
Feb 17, 2019 at 9:58 PM UTC
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 (1892 - 1938), translated and edited by Robert Bly, and published by Beacon Press in Neruda & Vallejo: Selected Poems. © 1971 by Robert Bly
