No One Lives In The House Anymore

CESAR VALLEJO

No one lives in the house anymore - you tell me - all have gone. The living room, the bedroom, the patio, are deserted. No one remains any longer, since everyone has departed.

And I say to you: When someone leaves, someone remains. The point through which the man passed is no longer empty.The only place that is empty, with human solitude, is that through which no man has passed. New houses are deader than the old ones, for their walls are of stone or steel but not of men. A house comes into the world, not when people finish building it, but when they begin to inhabit it. A house lives only off men, like a tomb. That's why there is an irresistible resemblance between a house and a tomb. Except that the house is nourished by the life of man, while the tomb is nourished by the death of man. That is why the first is standing, while the second is laid out.

Everyone has departed from the house, in reality, but all have remained in truth. And it is not their memory that remains, but they themselves. Nor is it that they remain in the house, but that they continue about the house. Functions and acts leave the house by train or by plane or on horseback, walking or crawling. What continues in the house is the organ, the agent in gerund and in circle. The steps have left, the kisses, the pardons, the crimes. What continues in the house are the foot, the lips, the eye, the heart. Negations and affirmations, good and evil, have dispersed. What continues in the house is the subject of the act.

--Translated by Clayton Eshleman