However I imagine my life or imagine not having yet been born, I will not succeed in freeing myself. It will not be what is yet to come, but that which came and has already left, but that which came and has already left.

However I imagine my life
or imagine not having yet been born,
I will not succeed in freeing myself.
It will not be what is yet to come, but
that which came and has already left,
but that which came and has already left.

Cesar Vallejo, from “XXXIII,” The Complete Poetry (University of California Press, 2007)