I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris— it does not bother me—Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.
It shall be a Thursday, because today,
As I put down these lines,
I have set my
To the evil.
Never like today have I turned,
And headed my whole journey to the ways where I am alone.
César Vallejo is dead.
They struck him,
All of them, though he did nothing to them,
They hit him hard with a stick and hard
With the end of a rope.
Witnesses are: the Thursdays,
The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain, and the roads…translated by Thomas Merton
