Hymn to the Volunteers of the Republic by Csar Vallejo Lyrics
Volunteer of Spain, militiaman
of trustworthy bones, when your heart marches off to die,
when it marches off to kill with its world-wide
agony, I truly don’t know
what to do, where to put myself; I run about, I write, I applaud,
I weep, I watch, I destroy, they extinguish, I tell
my breast to make an end to it, good, to come,
and I want to do myself injury;
I bare my impersonal forehead till I touch
the vessel of my blood, I restrain myself,
my stature is restrained by those famous architect’s falls
which honour the animal which honours me;
my instincts ebb back to their halters,
joy smokes before my tomb
and, once again, not knowing what to do, with nothing, leave me
behind on my blank stone, leave me,
alone,
quadrumane, closer by, much more distant,
for my hands won’t hold your long ecstatic moment
and I smash against your double-edged speed
my smallness dressed up in grandeur.
One diurnal day, clear, expectant, fertile
– oh biennium* of gloomy, suppliant semesters
throughout which gunpowder kept biting its lip!**
oh hard pain and harder flints!
oh bits champed by the people!–,
one day the people lit their captive match, prayed with rage
and sovereignly full, circular,
sealed their birthright with elective hands;
the despots were now trailing padlocks and in the padlocks their dead bacteria ...
Battles? No! Passions! And passions preceded
by sorrows with bars of hope,
by sorrows of common people with hopes of men!
Death and passion for peace, the people’s!
Martial death and passion among olive trees, let’s be clear about it!
Thus in your breath the winds change atmospheric needle
and the tombs change key in your breast,
as your frontal raises itself to the first power of martyrdom.
The world exclaims: “One of those Spanish affairs!” And it’s true. Let’s consider,
in a balance, at point-blank range,
Calderon asleep on the tail of a dead amphibian,
or Cervantes saying, “My kingdom is of this world, but
also of the next”: point and edge in two roles!
Let’s observe Goya, on his knees and praying in front of a mirror,
Coll, the paladin in whose Cartesian assault
plain footsteps had a sweat of clouds,
or Quevedo, that instantaneous grandfather of the dynamiters,
or Cajal, devoured by his tiny infinite, or, again,
Teresa, a woman, dying because she doesn’t die,
or Lina Odena, at odds with Teresa on more than one issue ...*
(Every act or voice of genius comes from the people
and goes towards them, directly or conveyed
by incessant blades of grass, by the rosy smoke
of bitter, unsuccessful passwords.)
Thus your creature, militiaman, your bloodless creature,
stirred by a motionless stone,
sacrifices itself, departs,
declines upwards and rises up its incombustible flame,
rises up to the weak,
distributing spains to the bulls,
bulls to the doves ...
Proletarian dying of the universe, in what frantic harmony
will your greatness end, your misery, your driving maelstrom,
your methodical violence, your chaos theoretical and practical, your urge,
Dantesque and so very Spanish, to love your enemy, be it by treachery!
Liberator girded with fetters,
but for whose endeavour the expanse would still be handleless to this very day,
nails go about headless.
the day remain ancient, slow, red,
our beloved skulls, unburied!
Peasant fallen for man with your green foliage,
with the social inflection of your little finger,
with your ox that remains behind, with your physics,
also with your word tied to a stick
and your rented sky
and with the clay ingrained in your weariness
and that which was under your nails on the march!
Builders,
agricultural, civilian and military,
of bustling, teeming eternity: it was written
that you would create light, closing
your eyes with death;
that, with the cruel fall of your mouths.
abundance will come on seven salvers, everything
in the world will suddenly be of gold
and gold,
oh fabulous beggars of your own secretion of blood,
gold itself will then be of gold!
All men will love one another
and will eat holding the corners of your sad handkerchiefs
and will drink in the name
of your ill-fated throats!
They’ll rest walking at the foot of this run
and they’ll weep thinking of your orbits, happy
they’ll be and to the sound
of your return, atrocious, flourishing, innate,
tomorrow they’ll adjust their chores, the figures they’ve dreamt and sung!
The same shoes will fit him who ascends
without track to his body
and him who descends to the form of his soul!
Embracing, the dumb will speak, the lame will walk!
The returning blind will see
and, quivering, the deaf will hear!
The ignorant will be wise, the wise ignorant!
Given will be the kisses you couldn’t give!
Only death will die! The ant
will bring scraps of bread to the elephant fettered
to its brutal delicacy; aborted children
will be born again, perfect, spatial,
and all men will work,
all men will procreate,
all men will understand!
Worker, saviour, our redeemer, forgive us, brother, our trespasses! As a rolling drum says in its adagios: what an ephemeral never, your back! what a changing always, your profile!
Italian volunteer, among whose campaign animals
limps an Abyssinian lion!
Soviet volunteer, marching at the head of your universal breast!
Volunteers from the south, from the north, from the east
and you, the westerner, bringing up the rear of the dawn’s funeral chant!
Known soldier, whose name
parades in the sound of an embrace!
Combatant whom the earth raised, arming you
with dust,
shoeing you with positive magnets,
you, with your personal beliefs in full force,
your distinct character, your intimate rod,
your immediate complexion,
your language walking about on your shoulders
and your soul crowned with pebbles!
Volunteer swathed in your cold,
temperate or torrid zone,
heroes all round,
victim in a column of victors:
in Spain, in Madrid, they’re calling you
to kill, volunteers of life!
Because they’re killing in Spain, others kill
the child, his toy which comes to a stop,
radiant mother Rosenda,
old Adam who talked aloud with his horse,
and the dog which slept on the stairs.
They kill the book, they fire on its auxiliary verbs,
on its defenceless first page!
They kill the statue’s exact case,
the scholar, his stick, his colleague,
the barber next door – possibly he cut me,
but a good man and, besides, unfortunate;
the beggar who yesterday was singing opposite,
the nurse who today went by weeping,
the priest burdened with the persistent height of his knees
Volunteers,
for life, for good men, kill
death, kill the wicked!
Do it for the freedom of everyone,
of the exploited and of the exploiter,
for peace without pain – I intuit it
when I’m asleep at the foot of my forehead
and even more when I go around shouting –,
and do it, I say,
for the illiterate to whom I write,
for the barefoot genius and his lamb,
for the comrades who have fallen,
their ashes embracing the corpse of a road!
So that you
would come, volunteers of Spain and the world,
I dreamt that I was good, and it was to see
your blood, volunteers ...
That was much breast ago, many yearnings,
many camels at the age of prayer.
Today good marches blazing on your side,
there follow you lovingly reptiles with immanent eyelashes
and, two steps, one step behind,
the course of water rushing to see its limit before it burns.
of trustworthy bones, when your heart marches off to die,
when it marches off to kill with its world-wide
agony, I truly don’t know
what to do, where to put myself; I run about, I write, I applaud,
I weep, I watch, I destroy, they extinguish, I tell
my breast to make an end to it, good, to come,
and I want to do myself injury;
I bare my impersonal forehead till I touch
the vessel of my blood, I restrain myself,
my stature is restrained by those famous architect’s falls
which honour the animal which honours me;
my instincts ebb back to their halters,
joy smokes before my tomb
and, once again, not knowing what to do, with nothing, leave me
behind on my blank stone, leave me,
alone,
quadrumane, closer by, much more distant,
for my hands won’t hold your long ecstatic moment
and I smash against your double-edged speed
my smallness dressed up in grandeur.
One diurnal day, clear, expectant, fertile
– oh biennium* of gloomy, suppliant semesters
throughout which gunpowder kept biting its lip!**
oh hard pain and harder flints!
oh bits champed by the people!–,
one day the people lit their captive match, prayed with rage
and sovereignly full, circular,
sealed their birthright with elective hands;
the despots were now trailing padlocks and in the padlocks their dead bacteria ...
Battles? No! Passions! And passions preceded
by sorrows with bars of hope,
by sorrows of common people with hopes of men!
Death and passion for peace, the people’s!
Martial death and passion among olive trees, let’s be clear about it!
Thus in your breath the winds change atmospheric needle
and the tombs change key in your breast,
as your frontal raises itself to the first power of martyrdom.
The world exclaims: “One of those Spanish affairs!” And it’s true. Let’s consider,
in a balance, at point-blank range,
Calderon asleep on the tail of a dead amphibian,
or Cervantes saying, “My kingdom is of this world, but
also of the next”: point and edge in two roles!
Let’s observe Goya, on his knees and praying in front of a mirror,
Coll, the paladin in whose Cartesian assault
plain footsteps had a sweat of clouds,
or Quevedo, that instantaneous grandfather of the dynamiters,
or Cajal, devoured by his tiny infinite, or, again,
Teresa, a woman, dying because she doesn’t die,
or Lina Odena, at odds with Teresa on more than one issue ...*
(Every act or voice of genius comes from the people
and goes towards them, directly or conveyed
by incessant blades of grass, by the rosy smoke
of bitter, unsuccessful passwords.)
Thus your creature, militiaman, your bloodless creature,
stirred by a motionless stone,
sacrifices itself, departs,
declines upwards and rises up its incombustible flame,
rises up to the weak,
distributing spains to the bulls,
bulls to the doves ...
Proletarian dying of the universe, in what frantic harmony
will your greatness end, your misery, your driving maelstrom,
your methodical violence, your chaos theoretical and practical, your urge,
Dantesque and so very Spanish, to love your enemy, be it by treachery!
Liberator girded with fetters,
but for whose endeavour the expanse would still be handleless to this very day,
nails go about headless.
the day remain ancient, slow, red,
our beloved skulls, unburied!
Peasant fallen for man with your green foliage,
with the social inflection of your little finger,
with your ox that remains behind, with your physics,
also with your word tied to a stick
and your rented sky
and with the clay ingrained in your weariness
and that which was under your nails on the march!
Builders,
agricultural, civilian and military,
of bustling, teeming eternity: it was written
that you would create light, closing
your eyes with death;
that, with the cruel fall of your mouths.
abundance will come on seven salvers, everything
in the world will suddenly be of gold
and gold,
oh fabulous beggars of your own secretion of blood,
gold itself will then be of gold!
All men will love one another
and will eat holding the corners of your sad handkerchiefs
and will drink in the name
of your ill-fated throats!
They’ll rest walking at the foot of this run
and they’ll weep thinking of your orbits, happy
they’ll be and to the sound
of your return, atrocious, flourishing, innate,
tomorrow they’ll adjust their chores, the figures they’ve dreamt and sung!
The same shoes will fit him who ascends
without track to his body
and him who descends to the form of his soul!
Embracing, the dumb will speak, the lame will walk!
The returning blind will see
and, quivering, the deaf will hear!
The ignorant will be wise, the wise ignorant!
Given will be the kisses you couldn’t give!
Only death will die! The ant
will bring scraps of bread to the elephant fettered
to its brutal delicacy; aborted children
will be born again, perfect, spatial,
and all men will work,
all men will procreate,
all men will understand!
Worker, saviour, our redeemer, forgive us, brother, our trespasses! As a rolling drum says in its adagios: what an ephemeral never, your back! what a changing always, your profile!
Italian volunteer, among whose campaign animals
limps an Abyssinian lion!
Soviet volunteer, marching at the head of your universal breast!
Volunteers from the south, from the north, from the east
and you, the westerner, bringing up the rear of the dawn’s funeral chant!
Known soldier, whose name
parades in the sound of an embrace!
Combatant whom the earth raised, arming you
with dust,
shoeing you with positive magnets,
you, with your personal beliefs in full force,
your distinct character, your intimate rod,
your immediate complexion,
your language walking about on your shoulders
and your soul crowned with pebbles!
Volunteer swathed in your cold,
temperate or torrid zone,
heroes all round,
victim in a column of victors:
in Spain, in Madrid, they’re calling you
to kill, volunteers of life!
Because they’re killing in Spain, others kill
the child, his toy which comes to a stop,
radiant mother Rosenda,
old Adam who talked aloud with his horse,
and the dog which slept on the stairs.
They kill the book, they fire on its auxiliary verbs,
on its defenceless first page!
They kill the statue’s exact case,
the scholar, his stick, his colleague,
the barber next door – possibly he cut me,
but a good man and, besides, unfortunate;
the beggar who yesterday was singing opposite,
the nurse who today went by weeping,
the priest burdened with the persistent height of his knees
Volunteers,
for life, for good men, kill
death, kill the wicked!
Do it for the freedom of everyone,
of the exploited and of the exploiter,
for peace without pain – I intuit it
when I’m asleep at the foot of my forehead
and even more when I go around shouting –,
and do it, I say,
for the illiterate to whom I write,
for the barefoot genius and his lamb,
for the comrades who have fallen,
their ashes embracing the corpse of a road!
So that you
would come, volunteers of Spain and the world,
I dreamt that I was good, and it was to see
your blood, volunteers ...
That was much breast ago, many yearnings,
many camels at the age of prayer.
Today good marches blazing on your side,
there follow you lovingly reptiles with immanent eyelashes
and, two steps, one step behind,
the course of water rushing to see its limit before it burns.