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“Absolute” by César Vallejo 🇵🇪 (16 Mar 189215 Apr 1938)
Translated from the Spanish by Clayton Eshleman
The color of old clothes. Shadowed July,
and just-harvested August. And one
coat of water that onto the resinous
pine of boredom grafted evil fruit.
Now that you have dropped anchor, dark clothing,
you return dampened with a sumptuous fragrance
in time, in abbreviation … And I have sung
the inclined feast that overturned.
But, have you no power, Lord, against death,
against the limit, against that which ends?
Ay! wound the color of old clothes,
how it slightly opens and smells of burnt honey!
Oh exalted unity! Oh that which is one for all!
Love against space and against time!
A single heartbeat;
a single rhythm: God!
And as the boundaries in surly irreducible
disdain shrug their shoulders,
there is a pouring forth of serpents
onto the virgin plenitude of 1.
A crease, a shade!