29 of 100: Black stone, white stone: poems

Today was my weekly poetry group—a half-dozen-plus of us, who meet on Zoom and read some themed poems together, then write for half an hour, and finally share what we've written. All of these people are well published; one is even former poet laureate of Wisconsin. Me, I stumble along. And I always learn something. And the actual poets are always very kind to me.

Today's prompt featured the Peruvian César Vallejo (1892–1938) and his poem 

Piedra negra sobra una piedra blanca

Me moriré en París con aguacero,
un día del cual tengo ya el recuerdo.
Me moriré en París y no me corro
tal vez un jueves, como es hoy, de otoño.

Jueves será, porque hoy, jueves, que proso
estos versos, los húmeros me he puesto
a la mala y, jamás como hoy, me he vuelto,
con todo mi camino, a verme solo.

César Vallejo ha muerto, le pegaban
todos sin que él les haga nada;
le daban duro con un palo y duro

también con una soga; son testigos
los días jueves y los huesos húmeros,
la soledad, la lluvia, los caminos . . .

Karla Huston, who presented the prompt today (she's the poet laureate), included these notes:

Written several years before his death, this sonnet just about got it right. Vallejo did die in Paris in a heavy rain, but not quite Thursday. Friday it was, Good Friday; spring, not fall.

The stones of the title recall a Peruvian practice of memorializing a fortunate event with a white stone, an unfortunate one with a black. The mood is an occluded Parisian gray, the speaker resignedly "prosing" his verse, turning his cheek while being cheeky, pointing fingers at others and himself, beyond yet caught in a confusion of tenses where the future is already present as a memory.

Here are two translations, the second one the most literal, the first the best known: 

Black Stone Lying on a White Stone

Translated by Robert Bly and John Knoepfle

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.

Cesar 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.

Black Stone Lying on a White Stone

Translated by Ravi Kopra

I will die in Paris on a day of heavy rains,
A day I already have the memory of.
I will die in Paris—it doesn't depress me—
Perhaps on a Thursday in fall like today.

It'll be Thursday because today's Thursday.
My arms hurt bad as I write verses today.
Never before in all my life have I
Felt so lonely as I feel today.

Cesar Vallejo's dead. They keep on
hitting him even though he harmed no one.
They hit him hard with a stick, very hard.

Also with a rope; his witness are the
Thursdays, the bones of his arms,
the loneliness, the roads and the rain . . .

And a few imitations:

Imitation of Immortality

Matt Morris

Maybe you already died, January, in the snow
of years. Remember your egg-shell Plymouth, its post-
ignition issues & bad brakes, skidding, flipping,
rolling over & over to the foot of the hill? No doubt

laundry day, like today, & you, like your laundry—
the shit-scorched shorts, lucky tube
socks & t-shirt from the Mystery Hole—turning, violently
turning, the profane world in spin cycle. Maybe

this is death—another string plucked
on a gaudy golden harp as you light
on all fours & go on, snow ever
falling, treacherous ice patch far
behind, laundromat open all night.

Here's one by Karla herself:

Variations on a Text

I will die at my kitchen table on a fidgety day.
I will finger a cigarette, stare down
the dregs in a glass of red wine.
Between puffs, the sky coughs a lung
full of rain and god’s hand pokes through,
wags a smoky finger at my transgressions.
It will be a day someone might remember.

This will be a Tuesday, the sun trying
to come out, wind sighing anxiously in the trees.
Mourning releases a new page, a rattling song,
thin as the light behind my eyes, sad
as the skin over my knuckles.
A dog shivers, violets clench their roots.

All the poets are dead, their words used up
like coins flipped in a gritty gutter.
Once the sun shone on the sea, on lilac eyes,
waves moving the street like soot.
Cars bleep their exhaustive voices.
Fire comes as witness,
fingers writing with ash.

And finally, another variation by yet another member of our group, Ruth Bavetta:

Black, White

                homage to César Vallejo

He died, my father,
in Auburn, on a Wednesday
in January, with the blankets thin
and white as his bones, unable
to turn to the fourth floor window,
unable to see the freezing clouds.

He died, my father,
after he could not swallow the sweetness
of the pears, after refusing
the yellow pill and the green one,
after the priest he did not want
came anyway.

He died, and he lies
high on Mill Peak,
black ash, white snow.