Poetry:::tribute to cesar vallejo

I was searching for the published and unpublished poems of Robert Bly when I encountered Cesar's name. He is the literature that Bly hadn't found in America rather, in Europe.

I want to have a copy of his works yet I only found four poems out from his three published collections, and i can't even pinpoint where these poems belonged to.


Cesar Vallejo (March 16, 1892 - April 15, 1938) published only three books of poetry but is nonetheless considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century. Always a step ahead of the literary currents, each of his books was distinct from the others and in its own sense revolutionary.

Black Stone on Top of a White Stone

I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris-- it does not bother me--
Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

It shall be a Thursday, because today, Thursday
As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders
To the evil. Never like today have I turned,
And headed my whole journey to the ways where I am alone.

César Vallejo is dead. They struck him,
All of them, though he did nothing to them,
They hit him hard with a stick and hard also
With the end of a rope. Witnesses are: the Thursdays,
The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain, and the roads...

To My Brother Miguel In Memoriam

Brother, today I sit on the brick bench of the house,
where you make a bottomless emptiness.
I remember we used to play at this hour, and mama
caressed us: "But, sons..."

Now I go hide
as before, from all evening
lectures, and I trust you not to give me away.
Through the parlor, the vestibule, the corridors.
Later, you hide, and I do not give you away.
I remember we made ourselves cry,
brother, from so much laughing.

Miguel, you went into hiding
one night in August, toward dawn,
but, instead of chuckling, you were sad.
And the twin heart of those dead evenings
grew annoyed at not finding you. And now
a shadow falls on my soul.

Listen, brother, don't be late
coming out. All right? Mama might worry.


Paris, October 1936

From all of this I am the only one who leaves.
From this bench I go away, from my pants,
from my great situation, from my actions,
from my number split side to side,
from all of this I am the only one who leaves.

From the Champs Elysées or as the strange
alley of the Moon makes a turn,
my death goes away, my cradle leaves,
and, surrounded by people, alone, cut loose,
my human resemblance turns around
and dispatches its shadows one by one.

And I move away from everything, since everything
remains to create my alibi:
my shoe, its eyelet, as well as its mud
and even the bend in the elbow
of my own buttoned shirt.

Black Messengers. (Translation of Los heraldos negros)

There are in life such hard blows . . . I don't know! Blows seemingly from God's wrath; as if before them the undertow of all our sufferings is embedded in our souls . . . I don't know! There are few; but are . . . opening dark furrows in the fiercest of faces and the strongest of loins, They are perhaps the colts of barbaric Attilas or the dark heralds Death sends us. They are the deep falls of the Christ of the soul, of some adorable one that Destiny Blasphemes. Those bloody blows are the crepitation of some bread getting burned on us by the oven's door And the man . . . poor . . . poor! He turns his eyes around, like when patting calls us upon our shoulder; he turns his crazed maddened eyes, and all of life's experiences become stagnant, like a puddle of guilt, in a daze. There are such hard blows in life. I don't know