Back to the Village

It’s dark when we arrive at the doorway
where I spoke my long-ago goodbye
as the rooster was singing one of his epics.
The door’s locked. I call out
and there’s no answer.

The stone bench beside the door
where Mamá brought my big brother
into this bright world so he would saddle
backs for me. But I would later ride them bare,
rambling through narrow streets and out
beyond—village boy that I was.
This very bench of stone is where I left
my hard childhood to yellow in the sun.
And this doorway framed by grief?

God, in His peace … somewhere else—
far from this place! My horse, mere beast,
snorts—he too is calling to them. He's scented
something, he clops his hooves on the cobblestones,
he snorts. But he’s not sure—
he swivels his pricked ears.

Papá must still be up. Praying. Maybe
even now he’s still fretting: Something’s made
the boy late. My simple-hearted sisters—
incessantly whispering their busy
little fantasies to each other, getting ready
for a holy day that’s not coming.
And almost everything
has been prepared. I hope and wait.
My heart’s an egg that almost…
but something’s blocking it,
something’s in the way.

That big family we forsook not so
long ago—this night nobody’s still
awake, nobody’s put even one candle on the altar
so that we’d come back—my soul and I.

I call out again. And… nothing.
I and my soul both hush. We begin to weep.
The animal snorts, tosses his head, whinnies.
But for all eternity they’re all asleep.
Yet this is so much for the best that at last
my tired horse, standing beside me, shakes
his head, softly jiggling his bridle and the reins.
But he falls asleep, then he wakes, he bows
his head low, this night,
he falls asleep again. And every time he wakes,
he nods to me and he says—
It’s all right. Everything’s all right.

 --César Vallejo (1922)

translated by Reginald Gibbons