Translation:The Black Heralds (1918)/Autochthonous Tercet
I.
The laboring fist softens,
and in a cross in every lip its refined.
It’s festive! The rhythm of the plough flies;
and each cowbell is a bronze precenter.
The roughness is sharpened. The escarcela speaks...
In the indigenous veins there sparkles
a yaravi of blood filtering through
the pupil in sunny nostalgias.
The Inca women, sighing deeply,
as in strange secular icons,
rosarize a symbol in their turns.
The Apostle later shines on his throne;
and he is, amidst incense, candles and chants,
the modern sun god for the field-laborer.
II
The sad Indian throws a staff in the air.
The crowd goes towards the radiant altar.
Twilight’s eye ceases
to see the burning-alive of the village.
The shepherdess dresses in wool and sandals
with folds of candor in her attire;
and in her humility of heroic and sad wool
her unbroken white heart is a snowflake.
Amidst music, fireworks,
an accordion is playing! Some shopkeeper
makes his sales pitch in the wind: “Nothing like it!”
The sparks, floating prettily, graciously,
are golden audacious wheat that the farmer
sows in the skies and in the stars.
III
Sunrise. The chicha in the end breaks
into sobs, lusts, fights;
Through odors of urea and pepper
a drunkard sketches a thousand scrawls as he walks.
“The morning that I go...” laments to himself
a rural Romeo sings haltingly.
Morning soup is now for sale;
and there arises an appetizing clamor of plates.
Three women pass by..., a layabout whistles... Far off
the river goes on drunk and singing and crying
prehistories of water, olden times.
And at the sound of a Tayanga box,
as if it were initiating a blue huaino, the Dawn
lifts her skirts above her saffron calves.