Cesar Vallejo
Translated by Rachel Galvin
HAT, COAT, GLOVES
Facing the Comˇdie Francaise is the Regency
Cafˇ; in it thereÕs a recondite chamber
with a table and a lounger.
When I enter, the immobile dust is on its feet
already.
Between my lips made of rubber, the ash
of a cigarette smokes, and in the smoke you
see
two intensive smokes, the thorax of the Cafˇ,
and in the thorax, a profound oxide of
anguish.
It matters that autumn be engrafted onto
autumns,
it matters that autumn be embodied of new
blossoms,
the cloud, of semesters; of cheekbones, the
wrinkle.
It matters to smell like a madman, postulating
how warm is the snow, how fleeting the turtle,
the how how simple, the when, how devastating!
TODAY I LIKE LIFE
MUCH LESSÉ
Today I like life much less,
but I always like to live: as I was saying.
I nearly touched the part of my whole and
restrained myself
with a pull at my tongue behind my word.
Today I stroke my chin while pulling back
and in these temporary trousers I tell myself:
So much life and never!
So many years and always my weeks!...
My parents buried with their stone
and their heavy-hearted heave that has not
ended;
full-length brothers, my brothers,
and well, finally, my bˇing standing and in a
vest.
I like life enormously,
but, of course,
with my dear death and my coffee
and seeing the leafy chestnut trees of Paris
and saying:
ItÕs an eye, this, that one; a forehead, this,
that oneÉand repeating:
So much life and never does the tune fail me!
So many years and forever, ever, ever!
I said vest, I said
whole, part, anxiety, I said nearly, so as not
to cry.
For itÕs certain I suffered in that hospital
close by
and it has its good side and its bad side to
have looked
my organism down and up.
I will always like to live, even on my belly,
because, as I was saying and I repeat,
S— much life and never! And s— many
years,
and ever, much ever, forever ever!
PAYROLL OF BONES
It was requested with a loud cry:
--Have him show both hands at once.
And this was not possible.
--Have them take the measure of his steps
while he cries.
And this was not possible.
--Have him think an identical thought, in the
time in which a zero remains useless.
And this was not possible.
--Have him do something crazy.
And this was not possible.
--Have them put, between him and another man
like him, a crowd of men like him.
And this was not possible.
--Have them compare him to himself.
And this was not possible.
--Have them call him, in short, by his name.
And this was not possible.
LXIII
It dawns raining. Well
coiffed
the morning drips fine
hair.
Melancholy is anchored;
and
in the badly asphalted oxident of Hindu furniture,
destiny veers, barely sits down.
Skies of the puna disheartened
by great love, the skies of platinum, fierce with impossible.
The flock ruminates and is
underlined
by an Andean whinny.
I remember myself. But
sufficient
are the masts of the wind, the rudders quieted
until they become one,
and the crickets of tedium and the bent, unbreakable elbow.
Sufficient is the morning of free manes of
precious pitch, serrana,
when I go out and look for eleven,
and itÕs not more than untimely twelve.