Los dados eternos [English translation]

God of mine, I am weeping for the life that I live;

I am sorry to have stolen your bread;

but this wretched, thinking piece of clay

is not a crust formed in your side:

you have no Marys that abandon you!

My God, if you had been man,

today you would know how to be God,

but you always lived so well,

that now you feel nothing of your own creation.

And the man who suffers you: he is God!

Today, when there are candles in my witchlike eyes,

as in the eyes of a condemned man,

God of mine, you will light all your lamps,

and we will play with the old dice . . .

Gambler, when the whole universe, perhaps,

is thrown down,

the circled eyes of Death will turn up,

like two final aces of clay.

My God, in this muffled, dark night,

you can’t play anymore, because the Earth

is already a die nicked and rounded

from rolling by chance;

and it can stop only in a hollow place,

in the hollow of the enormous grave.

• Artist:César Vallejo