Translation:The Spider

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The Spider (1918)
by César Vallejo, translated from Spanish by Wikisource

From the collection The Black Heralds (Los heraldos negros)

1829659The Spider1918César Vallejo

It is an enormous spider that does not move anymore;
a colorless spider, whose body,
a head and an abdomen, bleeds.

Today I saw it up close. And with such an effort
its innumerable feet extended
towards all sides.
And I have thought of its invisible eyes,
the fatal pilots of the spider.

It is a spider that trembles fixed
on the edge of a stone;
the abdomen on one side,
and on the other the head.

With so many feet the poor thing, and it cannot even then
make up its mind. And, seeing it today
stunned in such a difficulty,
it grieved me so to see this traveler.

It is an enormous spider, impeded by
its abdomen from following its head.
And I have thought of its eyes
and of its numerous feet...
And it grieved me so, this traveler!


 This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1938, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 85 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

Translation:

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse