Piedra Negra Sobre una Piedra Blanca (2021)
for Voice and Piano
Piedra Negra Sobre una Piedra Blanca is a song I wrote to the words of a poem of the same name by Cesár Vallejo. Performed by Adreina Kasper (Voice) and Tessa Shune (Piano).
The Spanish lyrics are raw and powerful:
Me moriré en París con aguacero,
un día del cual tengo ya el recuerdo.
Me moriré en París -y no me corro-
tal vez un jueves, como es hoy, de otoño.
Jueves será, porque hoy, jueves, que proso
estos versos, los húmeros me he puesto
a la mala y, jamás como hoy, me he vuelto,
con todo mi camino, a verme solo.
César Vallejo ha muerto, le pegaban
todos sin que él les haga nada;
le daban duro con un palo y duro
también con una soga; son testigos
los días jueves y los huesos húmeros,
la soledad, la lluvia, los caminos…
Translation into English:
I will die in Paris with a rainstorm,
on a day I already remember,
I will die in Paris - and I don't shy away -
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is, in autumn.
It will be Thursday, because today, Thursday, as I prose
these lines, I've put on my humeri in a bad mood,
and, today like never before, I've turned back,
with all of my road, to see myself alone.
César Vallejo has died; they kept hitting him,
everyone, even though he does nothing to them,
they gave it to him hard with a club and hard
also with a rope; witnesses are
the Thursday days and the humerus bones,
the solitude, the rain, the roads...