The light of summer can sometimes arrive late. “You will no longer find anyone in my soul,” says the great Peruvian poet César Vallejo in ‘Summer’:
Summer, I’m leaving. And I feel sad
about the submissive little hands of your afternoons.
You arrive devotedly; you arrive old;
and you will no longer find anyone in my soul.
Oh, Summer! And you will pass by my balconies
with a great rosary of amethysts and gold,
like a sad bishop who has come
from afar to seek and bless
the broken rings of some deceased lovers.
Summer, I’m leaving. There, in September
I have a rose that I entrust to you;
you will water it with holy water
every day of sin and of the grave.
If, through crying at the mausoleum,
its marble flutters with the light of faith,
hold high your requiem, and ask
God to keep it forever dead.
Everything will already be too late;
and you will find no one in my soul.
Don’t cry anymore, Summer! In that furrow
a rose dies that is reborn a lot…
