IX
I endeaVor to givvve the vlow back at a blow.
Her two wide sheets, her valve
that spreads out in succulent reception
of multiplicand to multiplier,
her excellent condition toward pleasure,
all equips truth.
I endeavor to givve the blow back at a blow.
For her flattery, I interventilate Bolivarian roughness
to thirty-two cables and their multiples,
sovereign thick lips, the two volumes of the Work,
are squeezed tightly hair by hair
and I don’t live through an absence then,
nor to the touch.
I fail to gibe the blow back at a blow.
We’ll never saddle the taurous Slovvering
of selfishness and that bedsheet’s
mortal fray,
since this one woman
how much in general she weighs!
And female is the soul of the absent one.
And female is the soul of mine.
XV
In the haven yonder, where we slept together
so many nights, I have now sat down
to walk. The bed frame of the dead lovers
was pulled, or maybe what could’ve happened.
You’ve come early for other matters,
and you aren’t here anymore. It’s the haven
where I read one night, beside you,
amongst your tender dots,
a tale by Daudet. It’s the beloved
haven. Don’t mistake it.
I’ve started to remember the bygone
summer days, your going in and out,
slight and weary and pale across the rooms.
In this rainy night,
far from each other by now, I suddenly jump . . .
It’s two doors opening closing by themselves,
two doors that toward the wind come and go
shadow to shadow.
XLIX
Whispered in disquiet, I traverse,
the long suit of feeling, the Mondays
of truth.
Nobody looks for nor recognizes me
and even I have forgotten
to whom I’ll belong.
A certain cloakroom, only it, will know
all of us on the white sheets
of departures.
That cloakroom, on its own,
upon return from each camp,
from each candleholder
blind at birth.
Neither do I discover anyone, under
this mulch that iridizes the Mondays
of reason;
and I do nothing but smile at each spike
from the gates, in the maddening search
of the known one.
Good cloakroom, open to me
your white sheets:
I want to recognize the 1 at least,
I want the foothold, I want to
even know of being.
In the base frames where we get dressed,
there ain’t, there Is nobody: only sheets
wide open.
And always the suits unhooking
by themselves, from hangers
like grotesque ductor forefingers,
and heading off bodiless, vacant,
over to the cautious tinge
of a huge wing broth with potato casseroles
and fried landmarks.
And to the bone!
LXV
Mother, tomorrow I head off to Santiago,
to bathe myself in your blessing and your lament.
Realigning I am my disappointments and the sore’s
pink of my made-up hustle & bustle.
Your arch of astonishment will wait for me,
the tonsured columns of your yearnings
that finish off their life. The patio will wait for me,
the downstairs corridor with its tondi and its festal
pie fringes. My preceptor armchair will wait for me,
that good large-jawed piece of furniture of dynastic
leather, grumbling all-along at the great-great-grandchild
butt-cheeks, from strap to wee-strap.
I am sifting my purest affections.
I am probing the axis—don’t you hear the drill gasp?
don’t you hear the bugle crunch?
I am expressing your love formula
for each and every hole of this floor.
Oh if the tacit flywheels were lined up
for all the most distant strips,
for all the most distinct trysts.
Like that, immortal dead woman. Like that.
Under the double arches of your blood, where one
has to pass by so much on tiptoe, that even my father
in order to go about there,
humbled himself until less than half of a man,
until becoming the first little one you had.
Like that, immortal dead woman.
Between the colonnade of your bones
that cannot even crumble from crying,
and in whose side not even Destiny could obtrude
a single one of its fingers.
Like that, immortal dead woman.
Like that.
from Trilce
César Vallejo
translated from the Spanish by César Jumpa Sánchez
Listen to:
My introduction to Vallejo came in the mid-nineties, as I was starting elementary school in my hometown. Ever since then, I had always wondered about his enigmatic figure, clearly central in the Peruvian literary pantheon: an oftentimes circumspect, redolent character, who had achieved a prodigious reputation among the down-to-earth, popular section of society, as well as among the urban intelligentsia. My incursion into his universe continued when I moved to Lima, months prior to the turn of the twenty-first century. However, it wasn’t until my relocation to the United States and the acquisition of his Complete Poetry in a bilingual edition, with English translations by Clayton Eshleman, shortly before I started my undergraduate studies, that a turning point was to occur: the assimilation of a multifaceted approach that allowed me to attune to Vallejo’s plight and make sense of the universal human condition it encapsulated.
The purpose of this new rendition is to project Trilce’s breakthrough across the planet and for the readers to get a sense of a profound transition that came from its original impact by reflecting the revelatory qualities of its discourse, which contains an overall sense of estrangement and uprootedness that is intrinsic to Vallejo’s lifepath. Once Trilce is portrayed in another etymological register, the new language becomes more elastic, bringing it into contact with unsuspected boundaries. At times, this task was enough to generate turmoil in the psychosomatic development of the translator, because Trilce represents both the bridge and the fountain, the alpha and omega, all at once. There are lexical and performative bursts on its pages, given its attribute of primordial speech generator—not far from the initial Dadaist experiments of the mid-1910s—that attempts to equate that bulla or “ruckus” (I) from the collection’s initial poem with the final canto de la lluvia or “rain song” from its last (LXXVII). Both axes are assimilated through a ceaseless process of consolidation between opposites, showcasing the kernel of the dialectics Vallejo was to deploy in the creations of his later Parisian years.
The purpose of this new rendition is to project Trilce’s breakthrough across the planet and for the readers to get a sense of a profound transition that came from its original impact by reflecting the revelatory qualities of its discourse, which contains an overall sense of estrangement and uprootedness that is intrinsic to Vallejo’s lifepath. Once Trilce is portrayed in another etymological register, the new language becomes more elastic, bringing it into contact with unsuspected boundaries. At times, this task was enough to generate turmoil in the psychosomatic development of the translator, because Trilce represents both the bridge and the fountain, the alpha and omega, all at once. There are lexical and performative bursts on its pages, given its attribute of primordial speech generator—not far from the initial Dadaist experiments of the mid-1910s—that attempts to equate that bulla or “ruckus” (I) from the collection’s initial poem with the final canto de la lluvia or “rain song” from its last (LXXVII). Both axes are assimilated through a ceaseless process of consolidation between opposites, showcasing the kernel of the dialectics Vallejo was to deploy in the creations of his later Parisian years.
César Vallejo (Santiago de Chuco, 1892–Paris, 1938) was one of the most emblematic Hispano-American poets of the twentieth century. During his adolescence, he moved to the coastal town of Trujillo. He completed his undergraduate studies there while composing verse that was to later appear in the volumes Los heraldos negros (The Black Heralds; Talleres tipográficos de la Penitenciaría, 1919) and Trilce (Talleres tipográficos de la Penitenciaría, 1922), both groundbreaking creations in the milieu of a predominantly modernista aesthetic championed by the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío. After five years in Lima and an ill-fated turn of events that resulted in his imprisonment in Trujillo for almost four months, he migrated to France in 1923. Once there, he published journalistic prose as a European correspondent for his home country. Upon his death, amidst the upheaval of the Spanish Civil War, he left many unpublished manuscripts in the hands of his widow Georgette. The poems she later published from that material on his behalf became known as Poemas humanos (Human Poems; Presses Modernes au Palais Royal, 1939).
César Jumpa Sánchez (b. 1989) is a writer and visual artist hailing from Trujillo, Peru. He moved to New York in his early teens, shortly after the events of 9/11. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College in 2012. A former member of itinerant writer circles such as Poetas en Nueva York, he is keen on reading his work at international literary events. He migrated to Europe in 2016, first to Barcelona, where he completed a master’s degree in Hispanic-American literature. He has been based in Paris since 2017. He is currently a PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Paris Nanterre, where his research focuses on parallels between the poetry of César Vallejo and T.S. Eliot. His poems, translations, and essays have appeared in journals such as Revista Almiar, The Opiate, Espergesia, The Fortnightly Review, and Vallejo & Company.
