Stanza 1

The first line of “The Black Heralds” is one of the most memorable in Spanish poetry: “There are blows in life so powerful . . . I just don’t know!” The intensity of the poem is immediately established with the subject of the painful blows and the questioning they engender, although a question is not asked but is left to the reader’s imagination by the ellipsis before the answer, “I just don’t know!” The line is the cry of the oppressed as they struggle to understand why life is so hard.

In the second through fourth lines, Vallejo says that these blows are as terrible as if they were from “God’s hatred.” These blows are so strong that they are capable of causing all the memories of one’s suffering to well up...