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Events
CESAR VALLEJO (Peru: 1892- Paris- 1938)
Translations by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi
THE WRETCHED
The day's about to come;
bind up your arm, look for yourself
under your mattress, stand once again
on your head, so you can walk straight.
The day's about to come, put on your coat.
The day's about to come; hold
your big intestine firm within your hand, ponder
before you meditate, for it is
awful when misery falls over one
and when one's tooth falls all the way down.
You need to eat but, I tell myself,
don't be sad, for sadness
does not become the poor, nor sobbing by the grave;
mend yourself, remember, trust
your white thread, smoke, roll-call
on your chain and keep it behind your portrait.
The day's about to come, put on your soul.
The day's about to come; they walk by,
have opened up an eye in the hotel,
whipping it, hitting it with a mirror of yours . . .
are you trembling? It's the remote state of the forehead
and the recent nation of the stomach.
They're still snoring . . . What a universe this snoring takes away!
How your pores remain, judging it!
With so many twos, alas, you're so alone!
The day's about to come, put on your dream.
The day's about to come, I repeat
from the oral organ of your silence
and it's urgent to take the left with hunger
and to take the right with thirst; despite all,
refrain from being poor with the rich,
stir
your coldness, because in it my warmth is integrated, beloved
victim.
The day's about to come, put on your body.
The day's about to come;
the morning, the sea, the meteor, walk
toward your tiredness, with flags,
and by your classic pride, hyenas
count their steps to the beat of the donkey,
the baker-woman thinks about you,
the butcher thinks about you, touching
the axe wherein the steel, the iron
and the metal are imprisoned; never forget
that during Mass there are no friends.
The day's about to come, put on the sun.
The day is coming, double
your breath, triple
your rancorous goodness
and elbow fear, link and emphasis,
for you, as you can see in your crotch and being
the bad immortal, alas,
have dreamt tonight that you were living
on nothing and dying of everything . . .