Cesar Vallejo Center

CESAR VALLEJO (Peru: 1892- Paris- 1938)

Translations by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi

I AM GOING TO SPEAK OF HOPE

I do not suffer this pain as César Vallejo. I do not hurt now as an artist, as a man or even as a mere living being. I do not suffer this pain as a Catholic, as a Muslim, nor as an atheist. Today I simply suffer. Were my name not César Vallejo, I would suffer this same pain. Were I not an artist I would still suffer it. Were I not a man or even a living being, I would still suffer it. Were I not Catholic, atheist, Muslim, I would still suffer it. Today I suffer from deep down. Today I simply suffer.

I hurt today inexplicably. My pain is so deep it had no cause nor did it lack a cause. What would its cause be? Where is that thing so important that it would cease to be its cause? Nothing caused it; nothing has stopped being its cause. Why has this pain been born, all by its own? My pain comes from the north wind and from the south wind, as those neutral eggs that some strange birds hatch from the wind. Had my girlfriend died, my pain would be the same. Had they cut my head clean off my neck, my pain would be the same. Were life, in short, some other way, my pain would be the same. Today I suffer from higher up. Today I simply suffer.

I see the starving man's pain and see his hunger move so distant from my own suffering, that if I fasted to death, at least a blade of grass would sprout from my tomb. The same for the man in love. How begotten his blood compared to mine, without source or consumption!

Until now I believed everything in this universe was inevitably a father or a son. But the fact is that today my pain is neither a father nor a son. It does not have enough back to night-fall, as it has more than enough chest to dawn. Placed in a dark room it would shed no light, and placed in a bright one, it would cast no shadow. Today I suffer come what may. Today I simply suffer.