Translation:The Black Heralds (1918)/Pilgrimage

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For works with similar titles, see Pilgrimage.
The Black Heralds (1918)
by César Vallejo, translated from Spanish by Wikisource
Pilgrimage
César Vallejo1829666The Black Heralds — Pilgrimage1918Wikisource

We go on together. Sleep
kisses our feet with sweetness;
and everything displaces itself in pale
renunciations without sweetness.

We go on together. The dead
souls, those that, like us,
crossed for love,
with sickly opal steps,
arise in their rigid mournings
and undulate within us.
Beloved, we are going to the fragile
border of a pile of earth.
The wing goes anointed in oil
and in purity. But a blow,
falling I don’t know where,
sharpens from each tear
a hostile tooth.

And a soldier, a great soldier,
wounds as epaulettes,
is enlivened in the heroic evening,
and at his feet he shows between laughs,
like a horrendous tramp,
the brain of Life.

We go on together, truly together,
unvanquished Light, sickly step;
we go on together by the
mustard-colored lilacs of a cemetery.