Cesar Vallejo

Cesar Vallejo

THE BLACK HERALDS


By Cesar Vallejo


There are blows in life so hard . . . I don’t know!
Blows like the fury of God; as if before them
The undercurrent of all we suffer
Is soaked into our souls . . . I don’t know!


They are small; but they are . . . they open dark crevices
In the bravest of faces and in the strongest of backs,
They are perhaps the ponies of Attila’s hordes;
Or the black heralds sent for us by Death.


They are the precipitous falls of the Christs of the soul,
Of some loved one that Fate blasphemes,
These bloody blows are the crackling of any bread
That burns us in the door of the oven.


And man . . . pitiful . . . pitiful!
Turns his eyes, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder;
Turns his manic eyes, and all reality pools
Like a puddle of guilt, in the stare.
There are blows in life, so hard . . . I don’t know!

I translated "The Black Heralds" first in the early 1990s with a professor from Crown Business Institute.  I looked through my paper files in 2007 but could not find that translation, so I translated it again by myself.  Below are items related to this blog.