And don’t tell me anything

 
And don’t tell me anything

And don’t tell me anything,

that someone can kill perfectly,

since, sweating ink,

someone does all he can, don’t tell me…

We’ll come back, gentlemen, to see ourselves with apples,

the creature will pass by late,

Aristotle’s expression armed

with grand wooden hearts,

and that of Heraclitus grafted onto that of Marx,

that of the gentle pealing roughly…

It’s what my throat told me:

someone can kill perfectly.

Gentlemen,

kind sirs, we’ll come back without parcels;

until then I demand, will demand of my frailty

the day’s stress, which,

as I see, was already waiting for me on my bed.

And I ask my hat for memory’s ill-fated analogy,

because sometimes I assume my immense mournfulness with success,

because sometimes I drown in my neighbor’s voice,

and endure

numbering the years on kernels of corn,

brushing off my clothes to the a dead man’s tune,

or sitting drunk in my coffin…

César Vallejo, “Y no me digan nada”

Translation by Jack Hayes

© 2017

Image links to its source on Wiki Commons:

“Héraclite” (“Heraclitus”): Johannes Moreelse; circa 1630.

Public domain