John Baker’s Blog

The Observer reports that the Mexican publishers, Planeta, are to publish the contents of Che Guevara’s green notebook, which was found among his belongings when he was shot by the CIA in 1967. The notebook has since been kept locked away by the Bolivian military.

The notebook contains 69 poems by Pablo Neruda (Chile), Nicolás Guillén (Cuba), César Vallejo (Peru) and León Felipe (Spain). The poems are written out in Guevara’s own hand.

The publication has been edited by the Mexican writer, Paco Ignacio Taibo II.

The following is a poem by César Vallejo:

The Black Heralds

There are blows in life, so powerful . . . I don’t know!
Blows as from the hatred of God; as if, facing them,
the undertow of everything suffered
welled up in the soul . . . I don’t know!

They are few; but they are . . . They open dark trenches
in the fiercest face and in the strongest back.
Perhaps they are the colts of barbaric Attilas;
or the black heralds sent to us by Death.

They are the deep falls of the Christs of the soul,
of some adored faith blasphemed by Destiny.
Those bloodstained blows are the crackling of
bread burning up at the oven door.

And man . . . Poor . . . poor! He turns his eyes, as
when a slap on the shoulder summons us;
turns his crazed eyes, and everything lived
wells up, like a pool of guilt, in his look.

There are blows in life, so powerful . . . I don’t know!

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