Sestina: Walter Benjamin at Port Bou

In a situation with no way out, I have no other choice but to end it. It is in a little village in the Pyrenees where nobody knows me that my life will be finished. I ask you to transmit my thoughts to my friend Adorno and to explain to him the position in which I saw myself placed. There is not enough time to write all the letters I would have liked to write.

—purportedly Walter Benjamin’s last communication, a postcard dated September 25, 1940)