I Should Like to Be Hanged on a Sunday Afternoon
By Carl Sandburg
I have often thought I should like to be hanged
On a summer afternoon in daylight, the sun shining and bands playing,
In a park or a public square or a main street corner,
everybody in town looking on and talking about it,
Newspaper extras spelling my name in tall headlines telling the town I am getting hanged.
And I smile to the sheriff and say he will be laughed at if the rope breaks
And he goes puttering, solemn, doing a duty under the law,
Feeding the ropes, searching corners, testing scantlings.
And before the cap is drawn over my head
And before my feet are tied for the straight drop
When I am asked if I have any last word to say before I go to meet my God and Maker;
I speak in a cool, even voice, fixing my eyes maybe on some dark-eyed mother in the crowd, a grown dark-eyed daughter learning against her.
I speak and say, “I am innocent and I am ready to meet my God face to face…”
I have often thought I should like to be hanged that way on a summer afternoon in daylight, the sun shining and bands playing.
Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca
by Cesar Vallejo
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...
Testimony
by Cesar Vallejo, translated by Paul Muldoon
I will die in Paris, on a day the rain’s been coming down hard,
a day I can even now recall.
I will die in Paris—I try not to take this too much to heart—
on a Thursday, probably, in the Fall.
It’ll be like today, a Thursday: a Thursday on which, as I make
and remake this poem, the very bones
in my forearms ache.
Never before, along the road, have I felt more alone.
César Vallejo is dead: everyone used to knock him about,
they’ll say, though he’d done no harm;
they hit him hard with a rod
and, also, a length of rope; this will be borne out
by Thursdays, by the bones in his forearms,
by loneliness, by heavy rain, by the aforementioned roads.
