Translation:The Black Heralds (1918)/Ostrich

by César Vallejo

Melancholy, remove your sweet beak already;
don’t gorge your hunger in my wheat fields of light.
Melancholy, it’s enough! As your daggers drink
the blood my blue leech would drain!

Don’t finish all the fallen woman’s manna;
I wish that tomorrow some cross may arise from it,
on that tomorrow on which I may not have someone to turn my eyes towards,
when the coffin opens its great mocking O.

My heart is a flowerpot watered by grief;
there are other old birds that graze within it...
Melancholy, stop withering my life,
and reveal your woman’s lip...!