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“Plaster” by César Vallejo 🇵🇪 (16 Mar 1892 – 15 Apr 1938)
Translated from the Spanish by Clayton Eshleman
Silence. Here night has now fallen,
the sun has gone down behind the graveyard;
here a thousand pupils are weeping:
do not return; my heart is already dead.
Silence. Everything here is now clothed
in strict grief; and this passion,
like bad kerosene, barely burns.
​
Spring will come. You will sing “Eve”
from a horizontal minute, from a
furnace in which the spikenards of Eros burn.
Forge there for the poet your pardon,
that will grieve for me still,
like a nail closing a coffin!
​
And yet … one night of lyricism, your
marvelous breast, your red sea
will flog itself with the waves of fifteen years,
on seeing far off, freighted with memories,
my corsair, my ingratitude.
​
Afterward, your apple orchard, your tendered lip
that humbles itself to me one last time,
and that dies bloody from so much loving,
like a pagan sketch of Jesus.
​
My love! And you will sing;
and the feminine in my soul will vibrate,
as inside a cathedral in mourning.