I Am Going to Speak about Hope
(For Spanish translation click here)

I do not suffer this pain as César Vallejo. I do not hurt now as an artist, as a man nor simply as a human being. I do not suffer this pain as a Catholic, or as a Mohammedan or an atheist. Today I am simply in pain. If I were not called César Vallejo, I would also suffer this same pain. Even if I were not a man not at least a human being I would also suffer it. Even if I were not Catholic, atheist, or Mohammedan I would still suffer. Today I suffer from the deepest depths. Today I am simply in pain.

Now I hurt without explanations. My pain is so much from the depths, now I don’t have cause nor do I need cause. What could its cause have been? Where is that cause of such importance that it stopped being its cause? Nothing has been able to leave this cause from being. For what has this pain been born, for itself? My pain is of the wind of the north and the wind of the south, like these sexless eggs that sometimes rare birds conceive in the wind. If my love had died, my pain would still be the same. If they had cut the collar of my race, my pain would still be the same. If finally, life was another form, my pain would still be the same. Today I suffer from the heights. Today I am simply in pain.

I see the hungry man’s pain and I see that his hunger walks so far from my suffering, to leave me fasting until death, it would always leave a fragment of grass from my tomb, at the very least. The same to the one in love. What engenders your blood for mine without source or end!

Until now I believed that all things of the universe, inevitably were fathers and sons. But here with my pain of today it is not father or son. My pain lacks courage to come out in the night, just as at dawn it is bold. If my pain lives in some dark house it would not give off light and if my pain lived in illumination, it would not cast a shadow. All I do today is suffer. Today I suffer happening what will happen. Today I am simply in pain.