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

From the collection The Black Heralds (Los heraldos negros)

1825115Embers1918César Vallejo

For Domingo Parra del Riego

I will declare for Tilia, in the tragedy,
my verses in plentiful bunches;
Each melodious fruit will bleed,
like a funerary sun, lugubrious wines.
Tilia will hold the cross
that in the final hour will be made of light!

I’ll ignite for Tilia, in the tragedy,
the drop of clamor on my lips;
and the lip, in parting for the kiss,
will break in a hundred sacred petals.
Tilia will hold the dagger,
the floricidal and auroral dagger!

Now in the shadow, heroine, untouched and martyrly,
you’ll reach for Life below your feet;
while, praying my verses, you keep vigil over
my head, like a darkly blood-stained host!
And from a lily, ravenous,
Like a virus, you’ll drink my blood!


 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.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

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.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse