Edad de plata / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Silver Age

I lived secluded in the countryside since the dissolution of my youth. Lucretius had transformed me into an aficionado of nature’s impartial treatment. I had conceived the resolution of voluntarily departing from life once I noted the symptoms of tedium, once I began to feel the impediments and chains of aging. I would have perished near the source of the dark river and a sob would have animated the invariable willows. My swan in mourning, symbol and memory of an eclipse, would have returned to its savage world.
     I had stopped visiting the neighboring city where I was born. I was hurt by the continuous image of its decadence and I was consoled by the memory of having fought for its sovereignty.
     My fellow citizens exercised affectionate feelings amidst the unhappiness and they called me out of retirement to participate in a general lamentation. They surrounded the family of a maiden who had died the morning of her wedding.
     I attended the funeral rites and drew the circular movement of a dance on the incorruptible surface of the coffin. Meleagrus, the same one from the Anthology, wrote at my bequest, a single verse in which he tried to reconcile Destiny.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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