XXV
Omens leap up to grapple the joints, the base, the brow, the under-face of walking numerators. Omens and warp-ends of lupine lumps. As the lee of each unraveled caravel, unamericanised, snorts past, every ploughfoot yields in a spasm of misfortune, with the young wrist ill-mannered to snotting on the back of the hand. And the sharpest treble-note is shorn and tied, and largely nosifies, into icicles of infinite pity. Proud loins puff as they bear, hooked on withered straps, the cockades with their seven colours below zero, from the guano islands to the guano islands. Such the stumps exposed to a poor faith. Such the courting season. That, too, of the circuit to ulterior stages, when the inert griffin tells only of failed, hushed crusades. Then omens come to cleave even to ghost doors and rough drafts. — César Vallejo, Trilce (trans. Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi)
