Translation:The Black Heralds (1918)/Plaster Cast

by César Vallejo

Silence. Here night has fallen,
and behind the cemetery the sun has left;
here are the tears of a thousand eyes:
don’t come back; my heart has already died.
Silence. Here everything is cloaked in
severe pain; and it barely burns,
like a weak gaslight, this passion.

Spring will come. You’ll sing “Eva”
from a horizontal minute, from a
stove in which the spikenards of Eros will burn.
Forge in there your pardon for the poet,
which will grieve me still,
like the nail that closes a coffin!

But... one night of lyricism, your
good breast, your red sea,
in spotting afar my corsair ship-my ingratitude-
full of memories, will lash it with
the waves of fifteen years.
After, your apple orchard, your offered lips,
that wastes itself one last time on me,
that dies a bloody death for having loved much,
like a pagan sketch of Jesus.

Beloved! And you will sing;
and what’s feminine in my soul will shudder,
as in a mourning cathedral.