César Vallejo: "Trilce XXIX"

 


César Vallejo (1892-1938) was an avant-garde Peruvian author, best-known for his poetry.  Only two books of his poetry were published during his lifetime: Los heraldos negros (1919) and Trilce (1922).  The poems in Trilce are famous for their oddity of syntax and language.  Below my translation, I give the original Spanish of this poem.


Trilce XXIX

Buzzes bottled boredom
beneath the unproduced moment and cane.

A parallel passes to
thankless line broken of joy.
Stranges me each firmness, fastened to that water
that ebbs, that laughs steel, cane.

Thread retempered, thread, thread binomial
where will you ravel,  knot of war?

Armor this equator, Moon.

***

Zumba el tedio enfrascado
bajo el moment improducido y caña.

Pasa una paralela a
ingrata línea quebrada de felicidad.
Me extraña cada firmeza, junto a esa agua
que se aleja, que ríe acero, caña.

Hilo retemplado, hilo, hilo binómico
¿por dónde romperás, nudo de guerra?

Acoraza este Ecuador, Luna.


Source: César Vallejo, The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and tr. Clayton Eshleman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 224.

Translation ©2024 B. P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.

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