El romance del bardo / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Romance of the Bard

I was banished from life. Within me I concealed a reverent love, a selfless devotion, macerating passions, for the courteous lady, distant from my reach.
     Fatality had signed my forehead.
     I would escape far from the city to meditate, amidst severe ruins, beside a monotonous sea.
     Right there, animated by pain, the shadows of the past circled.
     Our nation had perished resisting the excursions of an ignorant horde.
     Tradition had linked victory in the presence of an illustrious woman, a survivor from an undefeated race. She had to accompany us spontaneously, unaware of her own importance.
     We saw her, for the last time, day before the disaster, near the beach, wrapped in the turbulent wheel of sea birds.
     Since then, only oblivion can amend the dishonor of defeat.
     The grass grows on the battlefield, nourished by the blood of heroes.




La torre de Timón (1925)




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