Los heraldos negros

César Vallejo(1892–1938)

Los heraldos negros, 1919

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 sufridose empozara en el alma... Yo no sé!

Son pocos; pero son... Abren zanjas oscurasen el rostro mas fiero y en el lomo mas fuerte.Serán talvez los potros de bárbaros atilas;o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.

Son las caidas hondas de los Cristos del alma,de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitacionesde algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.

Y el hombre... Pobre...pobre! Vuelve los ojos, comocuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vividose empoza, como charco de culpa, en la mirada.

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

From Los heraldos negros (1919), via the Spanish Wikisource transcription. The original's spelling is kept («mas», «talvez», «atilas»).

Public domainThis poem is in the public domain. You may read it, copy it, recite it and publish it without asking anyone.

About the poem

«There are blows in life, so hard… I don't know.» So Vallejo opens his first book: blows like the hatred of God, so deep that all the undertow of what has been suffered pools in the soul. They are few, but they open dark trenches in the fiercest face and the strongest back.

They are the deep falls of the «Christs of the soul», the bread that burns at the oven's mouth. And man — poor, poor — turns his eyes, mad, and all he has lived pools «like a puddle of guilt» in his gaze. The poem closes by circling back to its first line, unanswered. With this book, of 1919, the avant-garde in Spanish begins.

The verse is kept in Spanish. Translating it in passing would replace the work with a paraphrase of it.