A orillas del mar eterno / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

On the Shores of the Eternal Sea

The winds gallop across the stadium of the sea, extract low sounds from the ships, provoke sonorous palpitations in the sails, and drag the waves to a noisier and more ephemeral life. A mountain with a hard incline projects its vague shadow far off, giving the sea the darkness of an aged mirror.
     The winds stir beneath a zone of the air, adorned with a distinct immobile seagull, a bird with a routine and tedious life, accustomed to the heights of the masts, where the tremendous pulse of the open sea culminates. It observes the slow retreat of the sun, from which it receives a tremulous aureola.
     The ships suffer brusque jolts, resembling drowsy beasts at arduous rest. They are out of place with a thick black color amidst the advanced afternoon. Their repose predicts swift navigation, under the impulse of the blown sails.
     The air fills with the barbarous sounds of the water, in which a deep force declares itself; they compose an infinite canticle, hermetically concerted with other distant harmonies. Its murmur sings the gleaming trace of the descending sun and reconstitutes, in the gradual nocturnal darkness, the voice of the primordial abyss.




La torre de Timón (1925)




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