César Vallejo was born in Santiago de Chuco, Perú, in 1892, the youngest
of eleven children. His father wanted him to become a priest as were
César's two grandfathers, but he expressed no interest in a religious
vocation.
Vallejo began writing poetry in 1913; by 1918 he had his first book of
poems published, Los heraldos negros. Two years later he was
unjustly
imprisoned for a period of four months. In 1922 he published Trilce,
then a year later some prose pieces as well, and that he year he left
Peru for Paris.
In 1928 he traveled to Russia because he believed that Communism could
deliver social justice to the world. His writing from 1923 until his
death strongly identifies with the plight of a suffering humanity. The
next year he spent traveling back and forth between Paris and Spain.
In 1931 he published his novel Tugsteno, the same year he
joined the
Congress of Antifascist Writers in Madrid.
Vallejo died in Paris of an intestinal infection in 1938. His Poemas
humanos was published a year after his death. Clayton Eshleman and
José
Rubia Barcia translated the Complete Posthumous Poetry of César
Vallejo,
which won the 1979 National Book Award.
The Black Messengers
There are in life such hard blows . . . I
don't know!
Blows seemingly from God's wrath; as if before them
the undertow of all our sufferings
is embedded in our souls . . . I don't know!
There are few; but are . . . opening dark
furrows
in the fiercest of faces and the strongest of loins,
They are perhaps the colts of barbaric Attilas
or the dark heralds Death sends us.
They are the deep falls of the Christ of
the soul,
of some adorable one that Destiny Blasphemes.
Those bloody blows are the crepitation
of some bread getting burned on us by the oven's door
And the man . . . poor . . . poor!
He turns his eyes around, like
when patting calls us upon our shoulder;
he turns his crazed maddened eyes,
and all of life's experiences become stagnant, like a puddle of guilt,
in a daze.
There are such hard blows in life. I
don't know!
Paris, October
1936
From all of this I am the only one who
leaves.
From this bench I go away, from my pants,
from my great situation, from my actions,
from my number split side to side,
from all of this I am the only one who leaves.
From the Champs Elysées or as the strange
alley of the Moon makes a turn,
my death goes away, my cradle leaves,
and, surrounded by people, alone, cut loose,
my human resemblance turns around
and dispatches its shadows one by one.
And I move away from everything, since
everything
remains to create my alibi:
my shoe, its eyelet, as well as its mud
and even the bend in the elbow
of my own buttoned shirt.
translated by Clayton Eshleman
To My Brother
Miguel In Memoriam
Brother, today I sit on the brick bench
of the house,
where you make a bottomless emptiness.
I remember we used to play at this hour, and mama
caressed us: "But, sons..."
Now I go hide
as before, from all evening
lectures, and I trust you not to give me away.
Through the parlor, the vestibule, the corridors.
Later, you hide, and I do not give you away.
I remember we made ourselves cry,
brother, from so much laughing.
Miguel, you went into hiding
one night in August, toward dawn,
but, instead of chuckling, you were sad.
And the twin heart of those dead evenings
grew annoyed at not finding you. And now
a shadow falls on my soul.
Listen, brother, don't be late
coming out. All right? Mama might worry.
translated by James Wright
Black Stone on Top
of a White Stone
I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris-- it does not bother me--
Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.
It shall be a Thursday, because today,
Thursday
As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders
To the evil. Never like today have I turned,
And headed my whole journey to the ways where I am alone.
César Vallejo is dead. They struck him,
All of them, though he did nothing to them,
They hit him hard with a stick and hard also
With the end of a rope. Witnesses are: the Thursdays,
The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain, and the roads...
translated by Thomas Merton
Poem to Be Read
and Sung
I know there is a person
Who looks for me in her hand, day and night,
finding me, every minute, in her shoes.
Doesn't she know that the night is buried
with spurs behind the kitchen?
I know there is a person composed of my
parts,
to whom I fuse when my waist goes
galloping in its exact pebble.
Doesn't she know that the coin that appeared
with her portrait won't return to her coffer?
I know the day,
but the sun has escaped me;
I know the universal act she did in her bed
with another's courage and that warm water, whose
superficial frequency is a mine.
Is this person, perhaps, so small
that even her own feet step on her?
A cat forms the boundary between her and
me,
right next to her share of water.
I see her on the corners, she opens and closes
her robe, earlier a questioning palm tree. . .
What can she do but change weeping?
But she looks and looks for me. It's a
story!
Los heraldos negros
