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XIII

1892 –

1938

    I think about your sex.
My heart simplified, I think about your sex,
before the ripe daughterloin of day.
I touch the bud of joy, it is in season.
And an ancient sentiment dies
degenerated into brains.

    I think about your sex, furrow more prolific
and harmonious than the belly of the Shadow,
though Death conceives and bears
from God himself.
Oh Conscience,
I am thinking, yes, about the free beast
who takes pleasure where he wants, where he can.

    Oh, scandal of the honey of twilights.
Oh mute thunder.

    Rednuhtetum!

César Abraham Vallejo was born on March 16, 1892, and grew up in Santiago de Chuco, an isolated town in north central Peru. Vallejo’s grandmothers were Chimu people and both of his grandfathers were Spanish Catholic priests. He was the youngest of eleven children and grew up in a home saturated with religious devotion.

Themes

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More by this poet

Half Light

^{Translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert}

I have dreamed of escape, and dreamed
of your silken things all over the floor.
Along a pier sits a new mother,
all of fifteen, who nurses on the hour.

César Vallejo

1918

Under the Poplars

^{Translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert}

^{For José Eulogio Garrido}

Like inscrutable imprisoned bards,
the blood poplars have gone to sleep.
Out on the hills, the Bethlehem sheep
mouth their grassy arias for the fallen sun.

César Vallejo

1918

Babel

^{Translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert}

Sweet ungracious home, forged
From a single blow and a single block
Of sunflower wax. And this is the home
She wrecks and restores, sometimes saying,
“A hospice is nice, and here you have it!”
And sometimes she breaks into sobs.

César Vallejo

1918

Poems

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XIII

More by this poet

Half Light

Under the Poplars

Babel

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