Absent (1918)
by César Vallejo, translated from Spanish by Wikisource

From the collection The Black Heralds (Los heraldos negros)

1827850Absent1918César Vallejo

Absent! The morning when I go
farther than afar, to the Mystery,
as if following inevitable ray,
your feet will glide towards the cemetery.

Absent! The morning when on the shore
of the sea of shadows and of the silent empire,
I leave like a mournful bird,
the white vault will be your prison.

It will have become dark in your gaze;
and you will suffer, and you will then take hold of
penitent lacerated whitenesses.

Absent! And in your own sufferings,
amidst a cry of bells,
a pack of regrets will cross you!


 This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1938, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 85 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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Translation:

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed.

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