Guitar (by César Vallejo, translated by Clayton Eshleman)
Guitar (by César Vallejo, translated by Clayton Eshleman)
Original Text
César Vallejo, The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Clayton Eshleman,
foreword Mario Vargas Llosa, intro. Efrain Kristal, and chronology Stephen M. Hart
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). This
poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2008 International Shortlist).
1 The pleasure of suffering, of hating, dyes
2my throat with plastic venoms,
3but the bristle that implants its magic order,
4its taurine grandeur, between the first string
5and the sixth
6and the mendacious eighth, suffers them all.
7 The pleasure of suffering … Who? whom?
8who, the molars? whom society,
9the carbides of rage in the gums?
10How to be
11and to be here, without angering one’s neighbor?
12 You are worthier than my number, man alone,
13and worthier than all the dictionary,
14with its prose in poetry,
15its poetry in prose,
16are your eagle display,
17your tiger machinery, bland fellow man.
18 The pleasure of suffering,
19of hoping for hope at the table,
20Sunday with all its languages,
21Saturday with Chinese, Belgian hours,
22the week, with two hockers.
23 The pleasure of waiting in slippers,
24of waiting cringing behind a line,
25of waiting empowered with a sick pintle;
26the pleasure of suffering: hard left by a female
27dead with a stone on her waist
28and dead between the string and the guitar,
29crying the days and singing the months.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011