Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems Read online

  He exhausted himself in the winter of 1937–38, working for the refugees, writing poems, anguishing over the beating the Left was taking in the Civil War, the deaths in Spain, the defeat of so much work by so many men. In the spring of 1938 Vallejo developed a fever the European doctors could not diagnose or treat, and he died in Paris on April 15, 1938, while it was raining. He was a Pisces, and had predicted years earlier: “I will die in Paris on a rainy day.” His body was buried in Mont-rouge Cemetery ; several French writers and artists were at the graveside. His wife Georgette, who had helped him stay alive for years, later moved to Lima, where she still lives.

  III

  I notice that contemporary English poets and critics want English poetry to be tied in to “history,” by which they mean linguistic history, the various layers of meaning a given word has taken on, the encrustations an iambic line has taken on by floating face down through the centuries, the curious angles an idea has chipped into it by being misunderstood by dopes in the Elizabethan, in the Tudor… . The outcome of this longing is that the word is never fresh, the line has fused vertebrae, and the poem does not convey thinking, but instead contains portraits of ideas, like those “Wanted” posters issued by police departments.

  But Vallejo’s art shows us what it’s like not to go about recapturing ideas, but actually to think. We feel the flow of thought, its power like an underground river finding its way for the first time through some shifted ground—even he doesn’t know where it will come out.

  César Vallejo embodies the history of mankind, as Jung and Freud do, not by sprinkling the dust of the past on his words, but by thinking his way backward and forward through it.

  He loves thinkers and refers to them again and again in his poems—Marx, Feuerbach, Freud, Socrates, Aristotle—at the same time he respects human suffering so much he is afraid that his thought and theirs might be too private:

  A cripple walks by giving his arm to a child.

  After that I’m supposed to read André Breton?

  In Poemas Humanos especially, Vallejo suggests so well the incredible weight of daily life, how it pulls men down ; carrying a day is like carrying a mountain. And what the weight of daily life wants to pull us down to is mediocrity. He hates it. I notice that women respond immediately to this horror of mediocrity in Vallejo, a horror women share, being often pushed by circumstances into monotonous, “one-stringed” living, without a trace of wildness. Vallejo wants life and literature to be intense or not at all.

  And what if after so many wings of birds,

  the stopped bird doesn’t survive!

  It would be better then, really,

  if it were all swallowed up, and let’s end it!

  It is this marvelous intensity that is his mark for me. Many poets we all know are able to associate with considerable speed when there are not many mammal emotions around—Wallace Stevens, for example, creates a philosophical calm in his poetry, inside of which he associates quite rapidly—but when anger or anguish enter the poem, they become tongue-tied, or lapse into clichés. Vallejo does just the opposite. Under the pressure of powerful human feeling, of anger, or self-doubt, or compassion, he leaps about wildly, each leap throwing him farther out into the edges of consciousness, and at the same time deeper into the “depths.” As he says, “Don’t we rise to go down?”

  Robert Bly

  THOUGHTS ON CÉSAR VALLEJO

  When I first translated a poem by César Vallejo, one summer night, I knew that I was in the presence of a personality as appealing as any I had met before. The man is a mystic who is skeptical, a fugitive deeply in love with his home, an isolated man who cannot put aside his painful communion with others. He expresses in masculine tones the massed, present anger of the poor man. And more, there is something very ancient in this Vallejo which gives his voice a force a reader seldom confronts. It is the authority of the oral poets of the Andes, those fashioners of the “harawi,” a mystical, inward-turning complaint. Its tones can still be heard in lyrics sung in the mountains of Peru and played on records in the homesick barrios of Lima. Born in the Andes of an Indian mother, César Vallejo took this folk form in its essentials, discarding what was superficial and picturesque, and made it the echo chamber for a modern and surrealistic speech.

  The art of Vallejo is a way of making disparate things live with each other: a young girl nurses the hour, a man points with a God-murdering finger, a man drowns the length of a throat, a stone walks crouched over in the soul. His ability to astonish with metaphor is matched by a talent for shifting from idiom to idiom. In poems like “Agape,” the idiom has a primal simplicity. In, for instance, “The Weary Circles,” the poem rises to piercing surrealistic metaphors, and then suddenly drops into the tough, blunt colloquial. Through his work the line springs from or opens into common images of simple and singular life: bread, the act of eating, of putting on your clothes, the pains in the bones, the weather of the day. His most grave poetry is seeded with the tags and catchwords of common speech, those small phrases which all men use to guard their helplessness before the incomprehensible. Other American poets have his ability to create startling metaphors, but no one that I know of has managed to express with such precision and such range the impossible relationship of a man to his own terrible self and his own terrrible times. He whimpers, he denounces, he poses, he sees through himself, he ruminates ; he does all the unimaginable things that everyone does. Compared with Vallejo, other poets seem afraid of the sound of their own voices.

  He is at once the most immediate and the most isolated of poets, this man who is always talking to someone who cannot answer. He is certainly a poet of stature, and has been recognized for a long time as one of the greatest of the Latin Americans. Now his light begins to fall the length of the hemisphere.

  John Knoepfle

  from

  The Black Riders

  (Los Heraldos Negros)

  1918

  LOS HERALDOS NEGROS

  Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes … Yo no sé!

  Golpes como del odio de Dios: como si ante ellos,

  la resaca de todo lo sufrido

  se empozara en el alma … Yo no sé!

  Son pocos, pero son … Abren zanjas oscuras

  en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.

  Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros atilas ;

  o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.

  Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma,

  de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.

  Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones

  de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.

  Y el hombre … Pobre … pobre! Vuelve los ojos, como

  cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada ;

  vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido

  se empoza, como un charco de culpa, en la mirada.

  Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes … Yo no sé!

  THE BLACK RIDERS

  There are blows in life so violent—I can’t answer!

  Blows as if from the hatred of God; as if before them,

  the deep waters of everything lived through

  were backed up in the soul … I can’t answer!

  Not many ; but they exist … They open dark ravines

  in the most ferocious face and in the most bull-like back.

  Perhaps they are the horses of that heathen Attila,

  or the black riders sent to us by Death.

  They are the slips backward made by the Christs of the soul,

  away from some holy faith that is sneered at by Events.

  These blows that are bloody are the crackling sounds

  from some bread that burns at the oven door.

  And man … poor man! … poor man! He swings his eyes, as

  when a man behind us calls us by clapping his hands ;

  swings his crazy eyes, and everything alive

  is backed up, like a pool of guilt, in that
glance.

  There are blows in life so violent … I can’t answer!

  Translated by Robert Bly

  LA ARAÑA

  Es una araña enorme que ya no anda ;

  una araña incolora, cuyo cuerpo,

  una cabeza y un abdomen, sangra.

  Hoy la he visto de cerca. Y con qué esfuerzo

  hacia todos los flancos

  sus pies innumerables alargaba.

  Y he pensado en sus ojos invisibles,

  los pilotos fatales de la araña.

  Es una araña que temblaba fija

  en un filo de piedra ;

  el abdomen a un lado,

  y al otro la cabeza.

  Con tantos pies la pobre, y aún no puede

  resolverse. Y, al verla

  atónita en tal trance,

  hoy me ha dado qué pena esa viajera.

  Es una araña enorme, a quien impide

  el abdomen seguir a la cabeza.

  Y he pensado en sus ojos

  y en sus pies numerosos …

  ¡ Y me ha dado qué pena esa viajera!

  THE SPIDER

  It is a huge spider, which can no longer move ;

  a spider which is colorless, whose body,

  a head and an abdomen, is bleeding.

  Today I watched it with great care. With what tremendous energy

  to every side

  it was stretching out its many feet.

  And I have been thinking of its invisible eyes,

  the death-bringing pilots of the spider.

  It is a spider which was shivering, fixed

  on the sharp ridge of a stone ;

  the abdomen on one side,

  and on the other, the head.

  With so many feet the poor thing, and still it cannot

  solve it! And seeing it

  confused in such great danger,

  what a strange pain that traveler has given me today!

  It is a huge spider, whose abdomen

  prevents him from following his head.

  And I have been thinking of his eyes

  and of his many, many feet …

  And what a strange pain that traveler has given me!

  Translated by Robert Bly

  ROMERÍA

  Pasamos juntos. El sueño

  lame nuestros pies qué dulce ;

  y todo se desplaza en pálidas

  renunciaciones sin dulce.

  Pasamos juntos. Las muertas

  almas, las que, cual nosotros,

  cruzaron por el amor,

  con enfermos pasos ópalos,

  salen en sus lutos rígidos

  y se ondulan en nosotros.

  Amada, vamos al borde

  frágil de un montón de tierra.

  Va en aceite ungida el ala,

  y en pureza. Pero un golpe,

  al caer yo no sé dónde,

  afila de cada lágrima

  un diente hostil.

  Y un soldado, un gran soldado,

  heridas por charreteras,

  se anima en la tarde heroica,

  y a sus pies muestra entre risas,

  como una gualdrapa horrenda,

  el cerebro de la Vida.

  Pasamos juntos, muy juntos,

  invicta Luz, paso enfermo;

  pasamos juntos las lilas

  mostazas de un cementerio.

  PILGRIMAGE

  We go along together. The dream

  laps so pleasantly at our feet ;

  and everything is distorted in pale

  unpleasant renunciations.

  We go along together. The dead

  souls, who, like ourselves, crossed over

  for the sake of love,

  with halting opal footsteps

  come out in their rigid mourning dresses

  and undulate toward us.

  Beloved, we walk on the fragile edge

  of a heap of earth.

  A wing goes by, anointed with oil,

  with purity. But a blow,

  falling somewhere I don’t know of,

  grinds a hostile tooth

  out of every tear.

  And a soldier, a huge soldier,

  with wounds for epaulets,

  gets bold in the heroic evening,

  and laughing, he shows at his feet,

  like a hideous pile of rags,

  the brain of Life.

  We go along together, close together,

  halting footsteps, undefeated light;

  we walk past the mustard lilacs

  of a cemetery.

  Translated by James Wright

  BABEL

  Dulce hogar sin estilo, fabricado

  de un solo golpe y de una sola pieza

  de cera tornasol. Y en el hogar

  ella daña y arregla; a veces dice:

  “El hospicio es bonito; aquí no más!”

  ¡Y otras veces se pone a llorar!

  BABBLE

  Meek house with no style, framed

  with a single knock and a single piece

  of rainbow wax. And in the house

  she destroys and she cleans ; says at times:

  “The asylum is nice. Where? Here!”

  Other times she breaks down and cries.

  Translated by John Knoepfle

  DESHOJACIÓN SAGRADA

  Luna! Corona de un testa inmensa,

  que te vas deshojando en sombras gualdas!

  Roja corona de un Jesús que piensa

  trágicamente dulce de esmeraldas!

  Luna! Alocado corazón celeste

  por qué bogas así, dentro la copa

  llena de vino azul, hacia el oeste,

  cual derrotada y dolorida popa?

  Luna! Y a fuerza de volar en vano,

  te holocaustas en ópalos dispersos:

  tú eres tal vez mi corazón gitano

  que vaga en el azul llorando versos! …

  A DIVINE FALLING OF LEAVES

  Moon: royal crown of an enormous head,

  dropping leaves into yellow shadows as you go.

  Red crown of a Jesus who broods

  tragically, softly over emeralds!

  Moon: reckless heart in heaven,

  why do you row toward the west

  in that cup filled with blue wine,

  whose hull is defeated and sad?

  Moon: it is no use flying away,

  so you go up in a flame of scattered opals:

  maybe you are my heart, who is like a gypsy,

  who loafs in the sky, shedding poems like tears! …

  Translated by James Wright

  LA COPA NEGRA

  La noche es una copa de mal. Un silbo agudo

  del guardia la atraviesa, cual vibrante alfiler.

  Oye, tú, mujerzuela, ¿cómo, si ya te fuiste,

  la onda aún es negra y me hace aún arder?

  La Tierra tiene bordes de féretro en la sombra.

  Oye tú, mujerzuela, no vayas a volver.

  Mi carne nada, nada

  en la copa de sombra que me hace aún doler ;

  mi carne nada en ella,

  como en un pantanoso corazón de mujer.

  Ascua astral … He sentido

  secos roces de arcilla

  sobre mi loto diáfano caer.

  Ah, mujer! Por ti existe

  la carne hecha de instinto. A mujer!

  Por eso ¡ oh, negro cáliz! aun cuando ya te fuiste,

  me ahogo con el polvo;

  y piafan en mis carnes más ganas de beber!

  THE BLACK CUP

  The night is a cup of evil. A police whistle

  cuts across it, like a vibrating pin.

  Trampy woman, listen, how is it, if you have gone away,

  that the wave is still black and still makes me flare up?

  The Earth holds the edges of a coffin in its darkness.

  Listen, tramp, you will never come back.

  My flesh swims, swims

  in that cup of darkness that still ma
kes me grieve ;

  my flesh swims in there

  as in the swampy heart of a woman.

  Starlike coal … I have felt

  dry rubbings of clay fall

  over my transparent lotus.

  Ah, woman! This flesh that is all

  instinct exists for you. Ah, woman!

  Because of this, black chalice! now that you are gone,

  I smother in the dust,

  and other desires to drink start pawing inside my flesh.

  Translated by James Wright

  and Robert Bly

  HECES

  Esta tarde llueve como nunca ; y no

  tengo ganas de vivir, corazón.

  Esta tarde es dulce. Por qué no ha de ser?

  Viste gracia y pena; viste de mujer.

  Esta tarde en Lima llueve. Y yo recuerdo

  las cavernas crueles de mi ingratitud;

  mi bloque de hielo sobre su amapola,

  más fuerte que su “No seas así!”

  Mis violentas flores negras ; y la bárbara

  y enorme pedrada ; y el trecho glacial.

  Y pondrá el silencio de su dignidad

  con óleos quemantes el punto final.

  Por eso esta tarde, como nunca, voy

  con este buho, con este corazón.

  Y otras pasan; y viéndome tan triste,

  toman un poquito de ti

  en la abrupta arruga de mi hondo dolor.

  Esta tarde llueve, llueve mucho. Y no

  tengo ganas de vivir, corazón!

  DOWN TO THE DREGS

  This afternoon it rains as never before; and I

  don’t feel like staying alive, heart.

  The afternoon is pleasant. Why shouldn’t it be?

  It is wearing grace and pain ; it is dressed like a woman.