Epexegesis

Epexegesis 

I was born on a day

when God was sick.

Everybody knows I’m living,

that I’m wicked; and they don’t know

the December that comes from that January.

There’s a void

in my metaphysical air

that nobody must touch:

the cloister of a silence

that spoke at the brink of fire.

I was born on a day

when God was sick.

Brother, listen, listen…

Okay. So I won’t go

without taking my Decembers,

without leaving my Januarys.

Well, I was born on a day

when God was sick.

Everybody knows I’m living,

that I chew…and they don’t know

why my verses screech,

the coffin’s dark sorrow,

polished winds

unscrewed from the Desert’s

inquisitive Sphinx.

Everybody knows…And they don’t know

that the Light is consumptive,

and the Shadow obese…

And they don’t know that the Mystery synthesizes…

that it’s the musical and

sad hump that denounces from a distance

the meridian passing from boundaries to the Boundary.

I was born on a day

when God was sick,

gravely.

César Vallejo, “Espergesia”

Translation by Jack Hayes

© 2017

Image links to its source on Wiki Commons:

Image of the Great Sphinx of Giza from The Earth and its Inhabitants by Elisée Reclus, Ernest George Ravenstein, A. H. Keane, 1886.

Public Domain