Selected Writings of César Vallejo. César Vallejo
and against all correction.
Can I say that they’ve betrayed us? No.
That all were good? Neither. But
good will exists there, no doubt,
and above all, being so.
And so what who loves himself so! I seek myself
in my own design which was to be a work
of mine, in vain: nothing managed to be free.
And yet, who pushes me.
I bet I don’t dare shut the fifth window.
And the role of loving oneself and persisting, close to the
hours and to what is undue.
And this and that.
[CE]
LVIII
In the cell, in what’s solid, the
corners are huddling too.
I straighten up the nudes that’re crumpling,
doubling over, stripshredding.43
I dismount the panting horse, snorting
lines of slaps and horizons;
lathered foot against three hoofs.
And I help him along: Move, animal!
Less could be taken, always less, from what
I’m obliged to distribute,
in the cell, in what’s liquid.
The prison mate used to eat wheat
from the hills, with my spoon,
when, at my parents’ table, a child,
I’d fall asleep chewing.
I whisper to the other:
Come back, go out by the other corner;
hurry up … hurry … hasten!
And unnoticed I adduce, I plan,
nigh to the broken-down makeshift bed, pious:
Don’t think so. That doctor was a healthy man.
I’ll no longer laugh when my mother prays
in childhood and on Sunday, at four o’clock
in the morning, for travelers,
the imprisoned,
the sick
and the poor.
In the sheepfold of children, I’ll no longer aim
punches at anyone, who, afterward,
still bleeding, might whimper: Next Saturday
I’ll give you some of my lunch meat, but
don’t hit me!
Now I won’t tell him OK.
In the cell, in the gas boundless
until balling in condensation,
who’s stumbling outside?
[CE]
LXI
Tonight I get down from my horse,
before the door of the house, where
I said farewell with the cock’s crowing.
It is shut and no one responds.
The stone bench on which mama gave birth
to my older brother, so he could saddle
backs I had ridden bare,
through lanes, past hedges, a village boy;
the bench on which I left my heartsick childhood
yellowing in the sun … And this mourning
that frames the portal?
God in alien peace,
the beast sneezes, as if calling too;
noses about, prodding the cobbles. Then doubts,
whinnies,
his ears all ears.
Papa must be up praying, and perhaps
he will think I am late.
My sisters, humming their simple,
bubblish44 illusions,
preparing for the approaching holy day,
and now it’s almost here.
I wait, I wait, my heart
an egg in its moment, that gets blocked.
Large family that we left
not long ago, no one awake now, and not even a candle
placed on the altar so that we might return.
I call again, and nothing.
We fall silent and begin to sob, and the animal
whinnies, keeps on whinnying.
They’re all sleeping forever,
and so nicely, that at last
my horse dead-tired starts nodding
in his turn, and half-asleep, with each pardon, says
it’s all right, everything is quite all right.
[CE]
LXIII
Dawn cracks raining. Well combed
the morning pours forth its fine hair.
Melancholy’s bound;
and on the Hindu-furnished ill-paved oxident,45
it veers, destiny hardly settles down.
Heavens of puna disheartened
by great love, heavens of platinum, dizmal46
with impossible.
The sheepfold chews its cud
and is underscored by an Andean whinny.
I remember myself. But the wind staves
suffice, the rudders so still
until becoming one,
and the tedium cricket and unbreakable gibbous elbow.
Morning suffices with free natty manes
of precious, highland tar,
when I leave to look for eleven
and it’s not but untimely twelve.
[JM]
LXV
Mother, tomorrow I am going to Santiago,
to dip myself in your blessing and in your tears.
I am taking on my disillusions and the rosy
sore of my pointless tasks.
Your arch of astonishment will await me,
the tonsured columns of your longings
that exhaust life. The patio will await me,
the downstairs corridor with its tori47 and festive
pie edgings. My tutorial armchair will await me,
that solid bigjawed piece of dynastic
leather, forever grumbling to the great-great-grandchild
rumps, from strap to strand.
I am sifting