White Rose (1918)
by César Vallejo, translated from Spanish by Wikisource

From the collection The Black Heralds (Los heraldos negros)

1847334White Rose1918César Vallejo

 
I feel good. Now
a stoic ice shines
in me.
It makes me laugh this ruby
rope
grinding in my body.

Rope without end,
like a
spiral
descending
from
evil...
bloody and left-handed rope
formed by
a thousand daggers in support.

So be it, may it braid
its rolls of funeral ribbons;
and may it tie the trembling cat
of Fear to the frozen nest,
to the final stove.

Now I’m serene,
with light.
And meowing in my Pacific,
a shipwrecked coffin.


 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