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“Lines” by César Vallejo 🇵🇪 (16 Mar 1892 – 15 Apr 1938)
Translated from the Spanish by Clayton Eshleman
Each ribbon of fire
that, in quest of Love,
I fling and vibrates in pitiful roses,
births me to the burial of a day before.
I do not know if the drumroll in which I seek it
will be the gasping of a rock
or the perennial birth of heart.
​
Extended toward the depth of beings
is an ultranervous axis, a deep plumb line.
Thread of destiny!
Love will divert such a law of life
toward the voice of Man;
and will give us a supreme liberty
in blue, virtuous transubstantiation,
against what is blind and what is fatal.
​
Let there palpitate in each cipher,
imprisoned in the frail dawns,
an even better Jesus from another great Yolk!
​
And afterward … The other line …
A Baptist who keeps watch, keeps watch, keeps watch …
And, riding on an intangible curve,
one foot bathed in purple.