– after Vallejo
I will die in Paris in a deluge
on a day which, even now, I recall.
I will die in Paris – I do not begrudge
it – on a Thursday, like today, in the fall.
Thursday, yes, as today, Thursday, as I commit
these words, I’ve assembled - all wrong - the bones
of my arm. All of it wrong, and I pivot,
looking back on the road. Then forward. Alone.
César Vallejo is dead. They beat him, beat him good,
all of them, though he meant no harm.
With a stick, hard, and a rope.
There are witnesses, too: the aching bones of his arm,
and Thursdays, and the solitude,
and the rain, and the road….
first published in Witness
{ 0 comments }
