Poem at the End, by Séamas Carraher

“I will die in Paris with a hard dirty rain,

on a day I now remember,

I will die in Paris – and I don’t run –

maybe a Thursday, like today, in autumn.”

César Vallejo, Black Stone on a White Stone

 

Poem at the End

 

Watching the news now

i know i will surely die

in a cold warehouse

erected by army engineers

on wasteground

between my place of work

and my own bedroom.

 

i will die

like all our homeless died,

in long lines

of suffering humanity

as if not enough of us

had died

this way

and already

down the centuries of human ignominy.

 

i will die as we all die

cursing the day of my birth

and worse,

this world i accidently

landed on

in my flight

between worlds

of infinite possibility.

 

i will die

an old man in my mind

but young in this vision that

has haunted me,

this vision of a world and a place

sheltered by angels

whose wings willingly embrace

an enormity of suffering

and whose warms hearts

shield

all these foolish children

in times of war.

 

séamas carraher 2 April – 12 April, 2020

From séamas carraher’s email to the editor;

[…]  Anyway: yes, I am isolated here but continue to work (as few shifts as possible). I work
with homeless street drinkers so it is not so safe (so I wrote my epitaph, which I will attach below,*
more on impulse and remembering Vallejo when I saw the pictures online than any particular forbidding).
The work is frustrating though as our people/residents really have little concern for illness due to their
enormous suffering and addictions… It offers a challenge to one’s compassion.[…]

 

 

Note César Vallejo’s poem translated by Clayton Eshleman, Grove Press, 1968 edition.