CESAR VALLEJO (Peru: 1892- Paris- 1938)
Translations by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi
THE NINE MONSTERS
So, unfortunately
pain grows in the world at all times,
it grows at thirty minutes per second, step by step,
and the nature of pain is twice the pain,
and the condition of martyrdom, carnivorous, ravenous,
is twice the pain
and the task of the purest herb, twice
the pain
and the goodness of being, our double pain.
Never, human men,
was there so much pain in the heart, in the lapel, in the wallet,
in the glass, in the butchery, in the arithmetic!
Never so much painful affection,
never did distance attack so close,
never did the fire
play better its role of dead coldness!
Never, sir minister of health, was health
so fatal
nor the headache extract so much forehead from the forehead!
And the furniture had in its drawer, pain,
and the heart, in its drawer, pain,
and the lizard, in its drawer, pain.
Misfortune grows, brother men,
faster than machines, at the rate of ten machines; it grows
with Rousseau’s cattle, with our beards;
evil flourishes for inexplicable reasons
and is a flood with liquids of its own,
with clay of its own, with a solid cloud of its own!
Suffering inverts positions, gives a function
in which the aqueous humour is vertical
to the pavement,
the eye is seen, and this ear heard,
and this ear tolls nine bells at the hour
of lightning, and nine guffaws
at the hour of wheat, and nine female sounds
at the hour of crying, and nine chants
at the hour of hunger and nine thunders
and nine lashes, less a scream.
Pain snatches us, brother men,
from behind, in profile,
drives us mad in the cinemas,
nails us to the gramophones
and unnails us on our beds, falls perpendicularly
on our tickets, on our letters;
and it’s very severe to suffer, one can pray . . .
And because
of pain, some
are born, others grow, others die,
and others are born but don’t die, others
without having been born, die, and others
are neither born nor die (these are the majority).
And also because
of suffering, I am sad
to my head, and sadder still to my ankle,
seeing the bread crucified, the turnip
bloodied,
crying, the onion,
the cereal, generally just fl our,
the salt turned to dust, the water fleeing,
the wine an ecce-homo,
the snow so pale, the sun so ardent!
Human brothers, how can I not
tell you that I cannot bear,
cannot bear do with so much drawer,
so much minute, so much
lizard and so much
inversion, so much distance and so much thirst for thirst!
Sir minister of health, what’s to be done?
Oh, unfortunately, human men,
there is much, brothers, so much to be done!
____________________
Also see:
The Eternal Dice: Selected Poems
Cesar Vallejo
translated by Margaret Jull Costa
New Directions, 2025
