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“For the Impossible Soul of my Lover” by César Vallejo 🇵🇪 (16 Mar 189215 Apr 1938)
Translated from the Spanish by Clayton Eshleman
My love: you have never wanted to shape yourself
as my divine love has devised.
Remain in the Host,
blind and impalpable,
the way God exists.
If I have sung a lot, I have cried even more
for you—oh my sublime parable of love!
Remain in the brain,
and in the immense myth
of my heart!
It is faith, the forge where I burned
the earthy iron of so much woman;
and on an unholy anvil I wanted to refine you.
Remain in the eternal
nebula, there,
in the polyessence of a sweet nonbeing.
And if you have never wanted to shape yourself
into my metaphysical love emotion,
let me flog myself,
like a sinner.