El clamor / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Clamor

I lived submerged in the shadow of a lethal garden. An affectionate being had left me in solitude and I constantly honored her memory. A few high walls, of a secular old age, were defending silence. The willows were sporting flowers of alien branches, which I myself had sewn into their sterile foliage.
     I have departed that city, founded on stony ground, during a night’s narcotic dream and have forgotten the path home. Did I see its name while reading the apostles’ course? I was at the mercy of my elders’ judgment and I didn’t ask them, before their death, about my birthplace.
     Nostalgia becomes sharp occasionally. The voice of the affectionate being visits me across faded time and I force my thought until I fall into delirium.
     I have glimpsed the city in the course of a soliloquy, finding myself ill and decayed. The polite voice was imploring me from a prison’s enclosure and a crowd was impeding me from a rescue attempt. The abominable faces were reconciling with the symbols of their flags.
     I tended not to leave my house in the city of my childhood. My parents would stop me at the front door with a gesture of terror.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }