Esto / sucedio...

       This
happened between two eyelids; I quivered
in my pod, furious, alkaline,
pulled up at the lubricated equinox,
at foot of the cold blaze in which I fizzle out.

       Alkaline slik-up I keep saying,
nearer than garlic, over the syrup sense,
deeper in, very more, the rusts,
on going the water and on coming the wave.
Alkaline slip-up
too, a wild one, in the colossal staging of the sky.

       What curses and harpoons I'll hurl if I die
in my pod; I'll offer up in sacred banana leaves
my five subaltern little bones,
and in the glance, the glance itself!
(They say that in sighs one builds
then bony tactile accordions;
they say that when those who fizzle out die thus
aie! they die outside the clock, hand
clutching a single shoe.)

       Getting it and all, cyma
and all, in the crying sense of this voice,
I make myself suffer, I extract sadly
at night my fingernails;
then I have nothing and talk alone,
I revise my half-years
and in order to stuff my vertebra, touch.


--César Vallejo, "Esto / sucedió..." (23 September 1937)
tr. Clayton Eshleman

La paz, la avispa

       Peace, wasp, wad, rivercourse,
corpse, deciliters, owl,
sites, ringworm, sarcophagi, waterglass, brunettes,
ignorance, pot, altarboy,
drops, forgetfulness,
potentate, cousins, archangels, needle,
vicars, ebony, spite,
part, type, stupor, soul...

       Ductile, saffroned, external, clear,
portable, old, thirteen, bloodsmeared,
they're photographed, ready, tumescent,
they're linked, long, bedecked, perfidious...

       Burning, comparing,
living, getting infuriated,
striking, analyzing, hearing, shuddering,
dying, holding on, locating, weeping...

       After, these, here,
after, overhead,
perhaps, while, behind, so much, so never,
beneath, maybe, far,
always, that one, tomorrow, how much,
how much!...

       What is horrible, sumptuous, slowest,
what is august, fruitless,
what is ominous, twitching, wet, fatal,
what is all, purest, lugubrious,
what is tart, satanic, tactile, profound...


--César Vallejo, "La paz, la avispa..." (25 September 1937)
tr. Clayton Eshleman

Escarnecido, aclimatado...

       Mocked, acclimatized to good, morbid, urent,
I double the carnal cable and play cups,
where the destinies end up in flies,
where I ate and drank what's cleaning me out.

       Monumental dram,
numeral bier, those of my debt,
those of my debt, when I fall exceedingly,
loudly, smackedpurply.

       At bottom, then,
it's time to moan with all my ax
and it's then year of the sob,
day of the ankle,
night of the rib, century of pained breath.
Sterile qualities, monotonous satans,
leap from the side,
from the flank of my sitting-in mare;
but, where I ate, how much I thought!
but, how much I drank, where I wept!

       Well that's life, life
being what it is, way over there, behind
the infinite; thus, spontaneously
before the legislative temple.

       Thus the string lies buried at the violin's base
when they spoke of the air, shouting, when
very leisurely they spoke of lightning.
The wrong cause thus doubles, we go
three by three to unity, thus
one plays cups
and those who fold match my bet,
the destinies end up in bacteria
and one owes all to all.


--César Vallejo, "Escarnecido, aclimatado..." (7 October 1937)
tr. Clayton Eshleman