cesar vallejo

[an assignment; based extremely closely on a poem by cesar vallejo, the name of which i forget.]

I'll die in Paris, on a grey day of rain,

I know the rhythm of the sullen patter on the street.

I'll die in Paris - but it doesn't matter

if it's a Thursday, like today, in the greyness of fall.

It will be a Thursday, because today is Thursday, as these words

have stated, and today the bones of my forearms

don't fit, and today the road is longer than ever,

and I in the middle of it, on a Thursday, alone.

Cesar Vallejo is dead. I never knew him.

They'll say they like him, he was pleasant

as they beat him with sticks and with

pieces of rope. This is evidenced

by the Thursdays, the armbones,

the loneliness, the sound of the rain on the road.