César Vallejo

Today a Poet from Peru. A Poet from the World.
César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza
Santiago de Chuco, an Andes village, March 16, 1892
Paris, April 15, 1938






BLACK STONE ON TOP OF A WHITE STONE

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, Thursday
As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders
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 also
With the end of a rope. Witnesses are: the Thursdays,
The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain, and the roads...

César Vallejo
translated by Thomas Merton