Ophelia
The witch prepares the drowsy fever poison. It requires water lilies and lentils.
From the sky of deaf colors, the north wind of inflated cheeks, an image from a Dutch drawing, blows its lethal breeze.
A slow singing, incipient, erects the bramble of thorns from the earth and demands the presence of a starving lizard. The monk of anxiety catches sight of his effigy on the forehead of a skeleton with a toothless smile.
Over the ruins, hidden under the webs and knots of a wild vine, the aerial form of a virgin flowered in an ideal century suppresses the spell and lulls the atmosphere with her ghost wings.
And she is seconded by the nightingale, poet of inconsolable love.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.29.2010
Serafita / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Seraphite
I witness the somber punishment of pride.
The unruly king is conceited about his inflexible virtue.
A stone, thrown by the hand of a lout, wounds the face of the profane image of victory, jewel of the palace front.
The lyrical nightingales, beneath the uniform sky, celebrate an enchanted country. They infuse the nostalgia of the sun and sunflower and declare themselves captives to flowers dressed up according to Iris’s frolicking.
An arduous thought wounds, since becoming a widower, the king’s soul. Family members flee from the atmosphere of purity and raving.
His daughter crosses, aerial and celestial, the chambers and towers. She hears the hymn of the larks at the triumph of the mystical warrior of the magic chalice.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I witness the somber punishment of pride.
The unruly king is conceited about his inflexible virtue.
A stone, thrown by the hand of a lout, wounds the face of the profane image of victory, jewel of the palace front.
The lyrical nightingales, beneath the uniform sky, celebrate an enchanted country. They infuse the nostalgia of the sun and sunflower and declare themselves captives to flowers dressed up according to Iris’s frolicking.
An arduous thought wounds, since becoming a widower, the king’s soul. Family members flee from the atmosphere of purity and raving.
His daughter crosses, aerial and celestial, the chambers and towers. She hears the hymn of the larks at the triumph of the mystical warrior of the magic chalice.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.27.2010
El verso / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Verse
The white water lily was surging from the pool, among the haughty ducks bearing in their feathers the blush of the flames. The cypress was confusing its tenuous leaves in the dust, at the intersection of the avenues. It was suffering, dressed in mourning, the spray of a crystal drizzle.
A domestic, supplied with a steel trident and a lantern at his waist, was moving through the ill-fated garden speaking aloud. The strutting peacocks were animating the indolent hours of darkness.
The Chinese princess, with a svelte figure, appeared on tiptoes to lament the decadent corolla of the flowers cultivated under a glass bell and abandoned herself to her humble and infantile tears.
That same day she was solicited for marriage and shared with me her bitterness. She wanted to take with her to the campaign tent of a nomad, to the glacial wasteland, a profound judgment, a verse from my fantasy, applied to the harshness of fortune and I drew it on her ivory fan, recalling the signs of a noble calligraphy.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The white water lily was surging from the pool, among the haughty ducks bearing in their feathers the blush of the flames. The cypress was confusing its tenuous leaves in the dust, at the intersection of the avenues. It was suffering, dressed in mourning, the spray of a crystal drizzle.
A domestic, supplied with a steel trident and a lantern at his waist, was moving through the ill-fated garden speaking aloud. The strutting peacocks were animating the indolent hours of darkness.
The Chinese princess, with a svelte figure, appeared on tiptoes to lament the decadent corolla of the flowers cultivated under a glass bell and abandoned herself to her humble and infantile tears.
That same day she was solicited for marriage and shared with me her bitterness. She wanted to take with her to the campaign tent of a nomad, to the glacial wasteland, a profound judgment, a verse from my fantasy, applied to the harshness of fortune and I drew it on her ivory fan, recalling the signs of a noble calligraphy.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.26.2010
La procesión / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Procession
I was encircling the lowlands of the immemorial city in search of wonders. I had received from a gardener the chimerical blue flower.
An old man approached me to guide my steps. He was preceding me with a sword in his hand and on one finger he was bearing the pontifical amethyst. The old man had frightened off Attila from his journey, appearing to him in dreams.
He addressed the seven thousand statues of a marble basilica and they came down from their socles and followed us through the deserted streets. The statues represented the troubadour, the gentleman and the monk, the most distinguished exemplars of the Middle Ages.
A few invisible bells disseminated the hour of the Angelus to the glacial sound of a harmonica.
The old man and the crowd of eternal characters accompanied me to the countryside and turned back away from me when the deep stars were imitating a trail of pearls on black velvet, suggesting an image of the lavish Venetian paintbrush. They drifted off elevating a radiant canticle.
I fell on my knees in the docile grass, praying a tercet in praise of Beatrice, and an exiled centaur passed by galloping in the night of uncertainty.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I was encircling the lowlands of the immemorial city in search of wonders. I had received from a gardener the chimerical blue flower.
An old man approached me to guide my steps. He was preceding me with a sword in his hand and on one finger he was bearing the pontifical amethyst. The old man had frightened off Attila from his journey, appearing to him in dreams.
He addressed the seven thousand statues of a marble basilica and they came down from their socles and followed us through the deserted streets. The statues represented the troubadour, the gentleman and the monk, the most distinguished exemplars of the Middle Ages.
A few invisible bells disseminated the hour of the Angelus to the glacial sound of a harmonica.
The old man and the crowd of eternal characters accompanied me to the countryside and turned back away from me when the deep stars were imitating a trail of pearls on black velvet, suggesting an image of the lavish Venetian paintbrush. They drifted off elevating a radiant canticle.
I fell on my knees in the docile grass, praying a tercet in praise of Beatrice, and an exiled centaur passed by galloping in the night of uncertainty.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.25.2010
La virgen de la palma / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Virgin of the Palm
I was living in seclusion in the darkness and the dust of my deserted house. The cold air, at one point transformed into a damned gust, was raising in absence from the light the lymphatic and sinister mushroom and would brusquely force the austere living room into the shade, suppressing the candelabra. A veil of purplish satin, ancestral jewel, would imitate the tapestries of the temple in Jerusalem, scratched by an invisible hand at the death of Jesus.
I had grown up an orphan and without notice or discipline. The mute enclosure of the home would persuade me to solicit in the streets and plazas the ease, the leisure of my rebellious youth. An immaculate woman, foreign to herself, shied away from me and from the petulant trot of my horse in the secrecy of her window. She had settled her glance in the forms of a magic rouge.
Count Alfieri, insistent on the emphasis of tragedy, had stayed in the same city before and more than one neighbor pondered his detour from mankind, his refuge on the avenue of the astounded cypress and the elegiac willow. The artist meditated alone upon an inclement love, upon a tacit vision.
I repeatedly assayed the discovery of the pensive woman and her graceful palace and I lost myself hopelessly in the middle of the day. In the night calm I drew a few dominant letters on the face of the building and I came to lose my enthusiasm for the darkness and the dust of my recondite house. A fright, the threshold of misfortune, was dividing my thought at each step and was tossing me toward an impure friendship.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I was living in seclusion in the darkness and the dust of my deserted house. The cold air, at one point transformed into a damned gust, was raising in absence from the light the lymphatic and sinister mushroom and would brusquely force the austere living room into the shade, suppressing the candelabra. A veil of purplish satin, ancestral jewel, would imitate the tapestries of the temple in Jerusalem, scratched by an invisible hand at the death of Jesus.
I had grown up an orphan and without notice or discipline. The mute enclosure of the home would persuade me to solicit in the streets and plazas the ease, the leisure of my rebellious youth. An immaculate woman, foreign to herself, shied away from me and from the petulant trot of my horse in the secrecy of her window. She had settled her glance in the forms of a magic rouge.
Count Alfieri, insistent on the emphasis of tragedy, had stayed in the same city before and more than one neighbor pondered his detour from mankind, his refuge on the avenue of the astounded cypress and the elegiac willow. The artist meditated alone upon an inclement love, upon a tacit vision.
I repeatedly assayed the discovery of the pensive woman and her graceful palace and I lost myself hopelessly in the middle of the day. In the night calm I drew a few dominant letters on the face of the building and I came to lose my enthusiasm for the darkness and the dust of my recondite house. A fright, the threshold of misfortune, was dividing my thought at each step and was tossing me toward an impure friendship.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.24.2010
Ocaso / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Sunset
My soul delights watching the sky in blue or cloudy stretches, with the murmur of a delicious waltz. It imitates the quietude of the bird that prepares to rest for the approaching night. The advance of the shade blesses, like that of a timid virgin arriving to the date, when the day gathers itself and its cohort of inopportune rumors. Its black veils grow silently, becoming thicker with time, until its uniform stain and gentle slip provide the illusion of a sea of sedative and evil waters.
Enveloped in the provident darkness, I imagine the solace of lying forgotten in the heart of an incalculable abyss, emulating the fortune of those characters whom the delirious Asiatic wit describes, happily captivated by the fascination of some marine divinity in the labyrinth of fantastic grottoes.
The sounds of the delicious waltz expire when the sun diffuses its final light over the oasis of the afternoon. In favor of the already quiet and dark atmosphere my senses enjoy their deserved lull of alert greyhounds. And to stop over my forehead the lazy gyre of its flight, from the heart of the shade surges the vampire of melancholy.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
My soul delights watching the sky in blue or cloudy stretches, with the murmur of a delicious waltz. It imitates the quietude of the bird that prepares to rest for the approaching night. The advance of the shade blesses, like that of a timid virgin arriving to the date, when the day gathers itself and its cohort of inopportune rumors. Its black veils grow silently, becoming thicker with time, until its uniform stain and gentle slip provide the illusion of a sea of sedative and evil waters.
Enveloped in the provident darkness, I imagine the solace of lying forgotten in the heart of an incalculable abyss, emulating the fortune of those characters whom the delirious Asiatic wit describes, happily captivated by the fascination of some marine divinity in the labyrinth of fantastic grottoes.
The sounds of the delicious waltz expire when the sun diffuses its final light over the oasis of the afternoon. In favor of the already quiet and dark atmosphere my senses enjoy their deserved lull of alert greyhounds. And to stop over my forehead the lazy gyre of its flight, from the heart of the shade surges the vampire of melancholy.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.23.2010
La alucinada / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Hallucinating Girl
The jungle had grown over the ruins of a nameless city. Through the weeds emerged, at each step, the vestige of an astonishing civilization.
Farmers and fishermen lived off the watery land, making the most of the primitive equipment of their trade.
More than one advanced society had succumbed, in an unexpected manner, in that morbid spot.
I experienced, through a demented virgin, the strangest event. She would cry once in a while, when the intervals of reason suppressed her serene madness.
She called herself a daughter of the ancient gentlemen of the place. They had thrown from their lavish mansion a bearded, repugnant old lady.
That rejection motivated successive calamities, vengeance from the harpy. She circumvented their only daughter, almost an infant, and persuaded her to toss, with her pure hands, ashen herbs into the canorous sea.
Ever since then its diminished waves play in silence. The region’s prosperity disappeared amidst a clamor. Bushes and herbage are born from the swamps and cover the rubble.
But the virgin watches, during her delirium, a magic grove, wrapped in a blue and trembling light, originating from an opening in the sky. She hears the insistent trilling of an invisible bird, and celebrates the pirouettes of winged elves.
The unhappy girl smiles within her disgrace, and moves away from me, speaking through her teeth a delirious song.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The jungle had grown over the ruins of a nameless city. Through the weeds emerged, at each step, the vestige of an astonishing civilization.
Farmers and fishermen lived off the watery land, making the most of the primitive equipment of their trade.
More than one advanced society had succumbed, in an unexpected manner, in that morbid spot.
I experienced, through a demented virgin, the strangest event. She would cry once in a while, when the intervals of reason suppressed her serene madness.
She called herself a daughter of the ancient gentlemen of the place. They had thrown from their lavish mansion a bearded, repugnant old lady.
That rejection motivated successive calamities, vengeance from the harpy. She circumvented their only daughter, almost an infant, and persuaded her to toss, with her pure hands, ashen herbs into the canorous sea.
Ever since then its diminished waves play in silence. The region’s prosperity disappeared amidst a clamor. Bushes and herbage are born from the swamps and cover the rubble.
But the virgin watches, during her delirium, a magic grove, wrapped in a blue and trembling light, originating from an opening in the sky. She hears the insistent trilling of an invisible bird, and celebrates the pirouettes of winged elves.
The unhappy girl smiles within her disgrace, and moves away from me, speaking through her teeth a delirious song.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.22.2010
Entonces / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Then
I dream that a violent winter gust blows on your uncovered hair, oh girl, who walks through the monstrous snowy city, where I hope to arrive still young, to watch you pass. I will recognize you on the spot, your tormented and exquisite soul, your feeble body and your blue glance will not surprise me; I have felt your delicate and weak hands, I have guessed your voice that sings and your graceful walk. The day of our encounter will be the same as any other in your life: I will see you making your way amid the throng of passers-by and carriages that fills the street with its tumult and the cold air with its noise. The street will be long, it will end where distant fogs join together; it will be formed by a double row of houses with no interval for living groves; it will be made more tedious by enormous buildings that deny the sight access to the sky. By then the birds that livened it with their song will be far from the Nordic city and the sun will be forgotten; so that the artificial light with its livid glare may rule, it will have been buried by the clouds, whose horror is increased by industry with the black breath of its fauces.
Then and there will be the final hour of this my youth elapsed without enjoyment. I will have gone to experience in the strange and septentrional city the bitterness of its farewell and the grief of its eternal abandonment. To suffer the twilight of youth I will already have been prepared by the departure of many illusions and the fading of many hopes. The remembrance of impossible affections will ache in my memory and the weariness of conquered desires will weigh on my spirit. And I will no longer aspire to anything else: I will have adapted my eyes to the ugly world, and closed my door to hostile humanity. My mansion will be for others impenetrable rock and for me firm prison. Stoic pride, I will have achieved horrendous solitude. Around my forehead will float grey hairs, grey as the ash of orphaned homes.
I will have arrived from far away with the eternal, deep sorrow, the one that was born with me in the blazing tropics and accompanies me like the awareness of living. A sorrow not calmed by the wonder of the skies and the perpetually luminous native seas, nor by the equatorial ardor of life, that has surrounded me exuberantly and languishes only in me. The years will have passed without dimming this sickly and aching sensibility, tolerable for whomever might only have the occupation of dreaming, and that unfortunately, because of life’s rough assault, exists within me like a cord about to break from painful tension. The sensibility that from the adverse world makes me flee to solitary reverie, will have become sharper and more fragile once my youth gravely recedes with the deliberate melancholy of the ship on the vespertine horizon.
When I find you, we will be joined together by the certainty of our exile in the modern city that torments itself with the thirst for gold. That day, too late, the last one of my youth, in which semi dead memories will awaken, like ghosts, when the winter forms the mortise of the Earth, will be the first one of our infinite and sterile love. Joined in the same reverie, we will escape from the world, each day more barbarous and avaricious. We will escape on a flight, because our lives will end without a trace, in such a way that this will be the epitaph of our idyll and our existence: they passed like somnambulists over the damned Earth.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I dream that a violent winter gust blows on your uncovered hair, oh girl, who walks through the monstrous snowy city, where I hope to arrive still young, to watch you pass. I will recognize you on the spot, your tormented and exquisite soul, your feeble body and your blue glance will not surprise me; I have felt your delicate and weak hands, I have guessed your voice that sings and your graceful walk. The day of our encounter will be the same as any other in your life: I will see you making your way amid the throng of passers-by and carriages that fills the street with its tumult and the cold air with its noise. The street will be long, it will end where distant fogs join together; it will be formed by a double row of houses with no interval for living groves; it will be made more tedious by enormous buildings that deny the sight access to the sky. By then the birds that livened it with their song will be far from the Nordic city and the sun will be forgotten; so that the artificial light with its livid glare may rule, it will have been buried by the clouds, whose horror is increased by industry with the black breath of its fauces.
Then and there will be the final hour of this my youth elapsed without enjoyment. I will have gone to experience in the strange and septentrional city the bitterness of its farewell and the grief of its eternal abandonment. To suffer the twilight of youth I will already have been prepared by the departure of many illusions and the fading of many hopes. The remembrance of impossible affections will ache in my memory and the weariness of conquered desires will weigh on my spirit. And I will no longer aspire to anything else: I will have adapted my eyes to the ugly world, and closed my door to hostile humanity. My mansion will be for others impenetrable rock and for me firm prison. Stoic pride, I will have achieved horrendous solitude. Around my forehead will float grey hairs, grey as the ash of orphaned homes.
I will have arrived from far away with the eternal, deep sorrow, the one that was born with me in the blazing tropics and accompanies me like the awareness of living. A sorrow not calmed by the wonder of the skies and the perpetually luminous native seas, nor by the equatorial ardor of life, that has surrounded me exuberantly and languishes only in me. The years will have passed without dimming this sickly and aching sensibility, tolerable for whomever might only have the occupation of dreaming, and that unfortunately, because of life’s rough assault, exists within me like a cord about to break from painful tension. The sensibility that from the adverse world makes me flee to solitary reverie, will have become sharper and more fragile once my youth gravely recedes with the deliberate melancholy of the ship on the vespertine horizon.
When I find you, we will be joined together by the certainty of our exile in the modern city that torments itself with the thirst for gold. That day, too late, the last one of my youth, in which semi dead memories will awaken, like ghosts, when the winter forms the mortise of the Earth, will be the first one of our infinite and sterile love. Joined in the same reverie, we will escape from the world, each day more barbarous and avaricious. We will escape on a flight, because our lives will end without a trace, in such a way that this will be the epitaph of our idyll and our existence: they passed like somnambulists over the damned Earth.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.20.2010
El retorno / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Return
To enter the kingdom of death I advanced through the bronze portico that interrupted the sinister ramparts. The shade rested on them perpetually like a vigilant monster. Inside the precinct a fearful and dark space extended itself, and a glacial cold that came from very far away prevailed. The ground beneath my feet was like a clumsy carpet, and I moved above it lightly suspended by invisible wings. The astonishment of eternity was revealing itself in august silence, comparable to the calm that surrounds the concert of distant stars. With it the mystery grew in that indefinite region, where no contour was breaking the opaque vagueness. The even spectacle of the invariable shade was perpetuating within me the stupor of the dream of death.
I had voluntarily invaded the world that begins in the sepulcher, to drown in its breast, as in a sea of oblivion, my damaged spirit. Time there stopped its clock and form succumbed in the funereal color. Darkness was surging from the occult abyss, with the stealth of a delayed tide with no murmur, and it was dragging me and had me at its mercy like a voluptuous deity. A captive of its lethal spell, I wandered a great space at a venture, obstinate in the strange and lugubrious pilgrimage. But when I felt behind me the clamor of life, like that of an abandoned and loving bride, I turned back in my steps.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
To enter the kingdom of death I advanced through the bronze portico that interrupted the sinister ramparts. The shade rested on them perpetually like a vigilant monster. Inside the precinct a fearful and dark space extended itself, and a glacial cold that came from very far away prevailed. The ground beneath my feet was like a clumsy carpet, and I moved above it lightly suspended by invisible wings. The astonishment of eternity was revealing itself in august silence, comparable to the calm that surrounds the concert of distant stars. With it the mystery grew in that indefinite region, where no contour was breaking the opaque vagueness. The even spectacle of the invariable shade was perpetuating within me the stupor of the dream of death.
I had voluntarily invaded the world that begins in the sepulcher, to drown in its breast, as in a sea of oblivion, my damaged spirit. Time there stopped its clock and form succumbed in the funereal color. Darkness was surging from the occult abyss, with the stealth of a delayed tide with no murmur, and it was dragging me and had me at its mercy like a voluptuous deity. A captive of its lethal spell, I wandered a great space at a venture, obstinate in the strange and lugubrious pilgrimage. But when I felt behind me the clamor of life, like that of an abandoned and loving bride, I turned back in my steps.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.19.2010
Fantasía de la estación adversa / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Fantasy of the Adverse Season
The parade of slow days, in mourning because of winter, visited by grief. The birds of the sky, emissaries of the storm, scattered by the gust of wind. The suspended fog, with winged feet, evasive of contact with the earth.
The palace of the fulminated rubble projects in the unknown region, at the shores of the sea of heavy waters, and a jungle covers its back.
The entourage of cheerful youths, arrived from beyond the horizon, one day profanes the halls and rooms of the feudal ruin. They ridicule the arms of the ancient panoply and their massive romp awakens indignant echoes.
They visit the jungle, where they cut solid trees at their roots, reproducing at each step the deafening collapse of a tower, and they mend a light skiff, confident they will continue, on new roads, their noisy pilgrimage.
They departed amid restless songs, a sign of their unprepared mood, to the exploration of the enigmatic sea, and they perished shipwrecked in its heavy waters, before communicating the discovery of the fatal palace.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The parade of slow days, in mourning because of winter, visited by grief. The birds of the sky, emissaries of the storm, scattered by the gust of wind. The suspended fog, with winged feet, evasive of contact with the earth.
The palace of the fulminated rubble projects in the unknown region, at the shores of the sea of heavy waters, and a jungle covers its back.
The entourage of cheerful youths, arrived from beyond the horizon, one day profanes the halls and rooms of the feudal ruin. They ridicule the arms of the ancient panoply and their massive romp awakens indignant echoes.
They visit the jungle, where they cut solid trees at their roots, reproducing at each step the deafening collapse of a tower, and they mend a light skiff, confident they will continue, on new roads, their noisy pilgrimage.
They departed amid restless songs, a sign of their unprepared mood, to the exploration of the enigmatic sea, and they perished shipwrecked in its heavy waters, before communicating the discovery of the fatal palace.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.18.2010
El sopor / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Drowsiness
I can’t move my sleepy, empty head. The discomfort has dissipated understanding. I am a stone from the sterile landscape.
The ghost with an imperious frown came in the secret of the shade and placed on my forehead its glacial hand. By its side was the outline of a black mastiff.
I have felt, in its presence and during the night, the continuous din of thunder. The stampede was wounding the root of the world.
Morning startled me far from my house and under the influence of the lethargic vision.
The sun gilds my hair and begins to stir my shapeless thoughts.
Collapsed on the rostrum, I represent the simulacrum of a dejected leader on top of his broken sword, in an ancient war.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I can’t move my sleepy, empty head. The discomfort has dissipated understanding. I am a stone from the sterile landscape.
The ghost with an imperious frown came in the secret of the shade and placed on my forehead its glacial hand. By its side was the outline of a black mastiff.
I have felt, in its presence and during the night, the continuous din of thunder. The stampede was wounding the root of the world.
Morning startled me far from my house and under the influence of the lethargic vision.
The sun gilds my hair and begins to stir my shapeless thoughts.
Collapsed on the rostrum, I represent the simulacrum of a dejected leader on top of his broken sword, in an ancient war.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.17.2010
El mensajero / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Messenger
The moon, seized by the impetuous clouds, barely gilds the vortex of the tremulous willows, sunken, with the earth, in a sea of shadows.
I was pondering on the shores of the sterile lake, facing the marble palace, fascinated by the menace of the black waters.
She appeared brusquely in the vestibule, tall and serene, awakening a slight murmur.
But she returned, deliberate, to her refuge, closing the iron door behind her, before returning to my senses and while I was forcing, to speak with her, my annulled word.
I circle the hermetic mansion, adding my voice to the inconsolable moan of the wind; and I await, on the abrupt floor, the arrival of the vessel without sails, under the governance of the ancient thaumaturge, monarch of a sad island, so I might be absolved of the heavy message.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Bilioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The moon, seized by the impetuous clouds, barely gilds the vortex of the tremulous willows, sunken, with the earth, in a sea of shadows.
I was pondering on the shores of the sterile lake, facing the marble palace, fascinated by the menace of the black waters.
She appeared brusquely in the vestibule, tall and serene, awakening a slight murmur.
But she returned, deliberate, to her refuge, closing the iron door behind her, before returning to my senses and while I was forcing, to speak with her, my annulled word.
I circle the hermetic mansion, adding my voice to the inconsolable moan of the wind; and I await, on the abrupt floor, the arrival of the vessel without sails, under the governance of the ancient thaumaturge, monarch of a sad island, so I might be absolved of the heavy message.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Bilioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.16.2010
La resipisencia de Fausto / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Resipiscence of Faust
Faust wants to pacify his curiosity, find reasons with which to explain once and for all the mirage of the universe. He has solicited the inspiration of solitude and dominates an abrupt peak, finding a tight hedge of clouds below him. With a bird’s lightness he traces of a mass of highlighted edges. The squall charges relentlessly against the sublime spot, adequate for the meditation of the fundamental problem.
Faust has abandoned the parsimonious study and Margarita’s soft love, ever since his dealings with a certain character who has recently shown up in town: a man of suspicious chatter, who disorganizes the neighborhood with the prestige of diabolical invention, distinguished by more than one grotesque detail.
He proposes to Faust the latest interrogations, inspiring in him a discontented and haughty curiosity, empowering him with fierce maxims, enemies of contemplation and respect. Faust rejects him from his dealings and friendship, uttered on the abrupt peak, redoubled by the fearsome echoes of the precipice; and the seducer retreats gesticulating grandiosely and without compass, obstinate with a swindler’s grimaces and maneuvers. He departs assured of the germination of his unhealthy influence.
Faust tries to alleviate with the distant journey, divided into dangers and orgies, the illness of that proud ideal, instilled by science; but he finds despair at the end of the new emotions. He solicits the vigorous meridional regions; he traverses, less than a fugitive, a gloomy kingdom, obsessed with killing and the bonfire, with a priestly soul within view of death, blaspheming effort and life.
But he finally arrives at an Elysian country where the myrtles and laurels, cultivated under a spring sky, flutter in the air’s melodious currents and stand guard beside and around the exemplary marble and the eternal ruins. He rests in a chimerical city, of lagoons and palaces, visited by birds; and this is when he abandons the disconsolate research. Credulous of the high veracity of art’s symbols, he hopes to find a musical and synthetic explanation of the universe.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Faust wants to pacify his curiosity, find reasons with which to explain once and for all the mirage of the universe. He has solicited the inspiration of solitude and dominates an abrupt peak, finding a tight hedge of clouds below him. With a bird’s lightness he traces of a mass of highlighted edges. The squall charges relentlessly against the sublime spot, adequate for the meditation of the fundamental problem.
Faust has abandoned the parsimonious study and Margarita’s soft love, ever since his dealings with a certain character who has recently shown up in town: a man of suspicious chatter, who disorganizes the neighborhood with the prestige of diabolical invention, distinguished by more than one grotesque detail.
He proposes to Faust the latest interrogations, inspiring in him a discontented and haughty curiosity, empowering him with fierce maxims, enemies of contemplation and respect. Faust rejects him from his dealings and friendship, uttered on the abrupt peak, redoubled by the fearsome echoes of the precipice; and the seducer retreats gesticulating grandiosely and without compass, obstinate with a swindler’s grimaces and maneuvers. He departs assured of the germination of his unhealthy influence.
Faust tries to alleviate with the distant journey, divided into dangers and orgies, the illness of that proud ideal, instilled by science; but he finds despair at the end of the new emotions. He solicits the vigorous meridional regions; he traverses, less than a fugitive, a gloomy kingdom, obsessed with killing and the bonfire, with a priestly soul within view of death, blaspheming effort and life.
But he finally arrives at an Elysian country where the myrtles and laurels, cultivated under a spring sky, flutter in the air’s melodious currents and stand guard beside and around the exemplary marble and the eternal ruins. He rests in a chimerical city, of lagoons and palaces, visited by birds; and this is when he abandons the disconsolate research. Credulous of the high veracity of art’s symbols, he hopes to find a musical and synthetic explanation of the universe.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.15.2010
Relatos adhesivos / Enrique Vila-Matas
Adhesive Tales
It was a big storm and there were no taxis to be found and I ended up sharing one with a stranger –a young man with the air of a poet– whom I left at a bar and then continued on my way. He never stopped talking the entire drive. Without even introducing himself, he started telling me that everything in the world was going very badly and would get even worse in the following weeks, months and years. Everything’s terrible, he added. And then he didn’t stop asking my opinions. What did I think about this, about that, about the recent reconstruction of the original big bang in Geneva, about Spain’s cultural backwardness, about the aftergoogle movement, about the infinite lineage of the foolish and, finally, what I thought about a brilliant and fun book that’s just been published, Elogio del pesimismo. He toned down the intensity of his questions for a few seconds, but only so he could return with more force and tell me art had something to do with achieving stillness amid chaos.
“The stillness intrinsic to prayer and to the eye of the storm,” he concluded emphatically.
Then he remained utterly quiet. It was a poetic moment almost worthy of applause because it managed to make me concentrate and think within the very eye of that storm that was devastating Barcelona. But it’s also true I only knew real stillness when he finally got out of the taxi.
I had already recovered some calm when the taxi driver said to me suddenly: “That young man spoke very well, did you notice? Very well. And he knew how to ask questions.” It seemed to me like a scene that had already been lived, but I didn’t know when or where. “I like asking questions too” said the taxi driver. And he wanted to know if I didn’t think it rare to come across reasonable people and he asked about I don’t know how many other things and it started to become palpable that the stranger’s tone had stuck to him.
A new sense is being born, I thought, and who knows, maybe the first sense also emerged like this: someone, in the night of time, caught another person’s narrative tone and amid the chaos a sense was born, just as I’ve seen one born today in this taxi... Not long afterward, I remembered why that scene of contagion had seemed like something that had already been lived before. One day many years ago, Monterroso had told friends in Barcelona about a trip through Mexico City in a taxi one night with Juan Rulfo. As everyone knows, the shortest trajectory in that city can last more than an hour, and on that day, accompanying Rulfo to his house, the trip was becoming interminable for Monterroso while his friend, lit by the tequilas, was trying to tell him about the novel he was working on and by which he would break his silence of so many years following Pedro Páramo. As he told it, the novel became more and more strange and chaotic. After an hour and a half of driving and a tangled novel, Monterroso finally left Rulfo at his house. He got out of the car and walked him to his door and said goodbye and, when he got back into the taxi he thought he’d have some peace for a while.
“That man told a lot of stories...” he heard with some alarm the taxi driver say to him. And the tone used by the latter started to sound like Rulfo’s, as though he had caught the same old story of chaos and had been touched by the enchantment of an adhesive tale. “I also have a very sad life to recount, mister...” For the entire hour the trajectory would last and which took them across the entire city, that driver punished Monterroso with his personal tragedy of being a lost soul. “A very dry and disconsolate life, mister...” A life emerging from chaos itself and from which a tone and a sense were being born. Told in one of the many taxis where each day the scene of the original big bang is reconstructed.
{ Enrique Vila-Matas, El País, 6 April 2010 }
It was a big storm and there were no taxis to be found and I ended up sharing one with a stranger –a young man with the air of a poet– whom I left at a bar and then continued on my way. He never stopped talking the entire drive. Without even introducing himself, he started telling me that everything in the world was going very badly and would get even worse in the following weeks, months and years. Everything’s terrible, he added. And then he didn’t stop asking my opinions. What did I think about this, about that, about the recent reconstruction of the original big bang in Geneva, about Spain’s cultural backwardness, about the aftergoogle movement, about the infinite lineage of the foolish and, finally, what I thought about a brilliant and fun book that’s just been published, Elogio del pesimismo. He toned down the intensity of his questions for a few seconds, but only so he could return with more force and tell me art had something to do with achieving stillness amid chaos.
“The stillness intrinsic to prayer and to the eye of the storm,” he concluded emphatically.
Then he remained utterly quiet. It was a poetic moment almost worthy of applause because it managed to make me concentrate and think within the very eye of that storm that was devastating Barcelona. But it’s also true I only knew real stillness when he finally got out of the taxi.
I had already recovered some calm when the taxi driver said to me suddenly: “That young man spoke very well, did you notice? Very well. And he knew how to ask questions.” It seemed to me like a scene that had already been lived, but I didn’t know when or where. “I like asking questions too” said the taxi driver. And he wanted to know if I didn’t think it rare to come across reasonable people and he asked about I don’t know how many other things and it started to become palpable that the stranger’s tone had stuck to him.
A new sense is being born, I thought, and who knows, maybe the first sense also emerged like this: someone, in the night of time, caught another person’s narrative tone and amid the chaos a sense was born, just as I’ve seen one born today in this taxi... Not long afterward, I remembered why that scene of contagion had seemed like something that had already been lived before. One day many years ago, Monterroso had told friends in Barcelona about a trip through Mexico City in a taxi one night with Juan Rulfo. As everyone knows, the shortest trajectory in that city can last more than an hour, and on that day, accompanying Rulfo to his house, the trip was becoming interminable for Monterroso while his friend, lit by the tequilas, was trying to tell him about the novel he was working on and by which he would break his silence of so many years following Pedro Páramo. As he told it, the novel became more and more strange and chaotic. After an hour and a half of driving and a tangled novel, Monterroso finally left Rulfo at his house. He got out of the car and walked him to his door and said goodbye and, when he got back into the taxi he thought he’d have some peace for a while.
“That man told a lot of stories...” he heard with some alarm the taxi driver say to him. And the tone used by the latter started to sound like Rulfo’s, as though he had caught the same old story of chaos and had been touched by the enchantment of an adhesive tale. “I also have a very sad life to recount, mister...” For the entire hour the trajectory would last and which took them across the entire city, that driver punished Monterroso with his personal tragedy of being a lost soul. “A very dry and disconsolate life, mister...” A life emerging from chaos itself and from which a tone and a sense were being born. Told in one of the many taxis where each day the scene of the original big bang is reconstructed.
{ Enrique Vila-Matas, El País, 6 April 2010 }
4.14.2010
Crepúsculo / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Twilight
Silvius barely resists the ingenuity of Beatrice. The mocking irritates the conceited young man.
The Gothic sun of the stained-glass windows paints the border of a cheerful cloud, in an alternating manner.
The foliage composes a continuous darkness, in the afternoon, in the white city.
Beatrice contemplates the river, facing the transitory flow and the identical figure in suspense.
The young man walks away threatening imaginary rivals. Beatrice uses, to say goodbye to him, a judicious, abstinent courtesy.
The young woman returns, in the presence of an eclipsed moon, to the severe thoughts of her tedium.
The incoercible shadows, with soft feet, with a burlesque mask, blow long flutes of ebony or silver.
A sudden barking, originating in the inner cloisters of the earth, dismays the laurel forest.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Silvius barely resists the ingenuity of Beatrice. The mocking irritates the conceited young man.
The Gothic sun of the stained-glass windows paints the border of a cheerful cloud, in an alternating manner.
The foliage composes a continuous darkness, in the afternoon, in the white city.
Beatrice contemplates the river, facing the transitory flow and the identical figure in suspense.
The young man walks away threatening imaginary rivals. Beatrice uses, to say goodbye to him, a judicious, abstinent courtesy.
The young woman returns, in the presence of an eclipsed moon, to the severe thoughts of her tedium.
The incoercible shadows, with soft feet, with a burlesque mask, blow long flutes of ebony or silver.
A sudden barking, originating in the inner cloisters of the earth, dismays the laurel forest.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.13.2010
Dionisiana / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Dionisiana
I went up to the overlook to celebrate an interview with Célimène at the start of the day. She was an equal to Homer’s queens due to her ability in the design and execution of ornamental fabrics. She awoke the memory of Alcinous’s wife amidst her docile maids.
She was smiling in the virgin light of morning. She wore her hair loose over her green satin suit, in which a few false stones completed the imitation of a noted dress belonging to Anne of Austria in the romance of the musketeers.
The same color repeated itself in the mantle of the pasture, where chance had disseminated the gladiolas required for the crown of a fluvial god. The spot, free from threat, could have served as a scene for an afflicted maiden’s walk in the course of a pastoral novel. A white horse suggested the case of an educated groom.
I was discoursing on the history of the exemplary lovers and their unfortunate end. The woman’s semblance and the isolated and superior place were restoring the hour of a heraldic century and suggested the frenetic duo of a queen and her entourage.
Célimène was denying herself the unpleasantness of tragedy, she was turning her mind toward the seductions of the Venetian past and would add them to the festive reality, from which she had exiled thoughts of evil and death. She was proposing to remove from oblivion and leave for the most distant future generations the image of her naked beauty, in the manner of a heroine from Titian.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I went up to the overlook to celebrate an interview with Célimène at the start of the day. She was an equal to Homer’s queens due to her ability in the design and execution of ornamental fabrics. She awoke the memory of Alcinous’s wife amidst her docile maids.
She was smiling in the virgin light of morning. She wore her hair loose over her green satin suit, in which a few false stones completed the imitation of a noted dress belonging to Anne of Austria in the romance of the musketeers.
The same color repeated itself in the mantle of the pasture, where chance had disseminated the gladiolas required for the crown of a fluvial god. The spot, free from threat, could have served as a scene for an afflicted maiden’s walk in the course of a pastoral novel. A white horse suggested the case of an educated groom.
I was discoursing on the history of the exemplary lovers and their unfortunate end. The woman’s semblance and the isolated and superior place were restoring the hour of a heraldic century and suggested the frenetic duo of a queen and her entourage.
Célimène was denying herself the unpleasantness of tragedy, she was turning her mind toward the seductions of the Venetian past and would add them to the festive reality, from which she had exiled thoughts of evil and death. She was proposing to remove from oblivion and leave for the most distant future generations the image of her naked beauty, in the manner of a heroine from Titian.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.12.2010
Los sentidos iluminados / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Illuminated Senses
The apparitors with simple souls were uttering the anthem of august praise and entrusting it to the breeze of child-like mischief.
The crescent, Maria’s footrest, was rowing in the sky of heraldic clarity.
The canticle was quieting the intimate sighs of a procession of invisible women, martyrs of an illustrious love. I was surprising the slip of their feet in the emerald moss.
The innocent voice of the squires was creating in an instant, on the dark earth, a paradisiacal enchantment. I was distinguishing the concert of some unknown birds, musicians of a divine thicket, attentive to interrupting themselves before the aria of the nightingale, friend to Juliet.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The apparitors with simple souls were uttering the anthem of august praise and entrusting it to the breeze of child-like mischief.
The crescent, Maria’s footrest, was rowing in the sky of heraldic clarity.
The canticle was quieting the intimate sighs of a procession of invisible women, martyrs of an illustrious love. I was surprising the slip of their feet in the emerald moss.
The innocent voice of the squires was creating in an instant, on the dark earth, a paradisiacal enchantment. I was distinguishing the concert of some unknown birds, musicians of a divine thicket, attentive to interrupting themselves before the aria of the nightingale, friend to Juliet.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.11.2010
De profundis / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
De Profundis
I have traversed the magic palace of the dream. I have fatigued myself in vain trying to discover the vestige of a woman absent from this world. I desired to reestablish her within my thoughts.
I conserve my emotions of a suffering and dejected adolescent. Her beauty adorned a street of ruins. I would begin to appear at her window amid the darkness of dusk. She exceeded me by a few years and I hid my delirious passion from slanderers.
She stopped appearing on a night of fears and anguish and I remembered unsuccessfully the signs of her home. A storm was flowing through the immensity.
I went on to vent the indelible melancholy in an adventure, where my friends got lost and died. Dawn found me in the precincts of a church, a monument erected by a maiden from other centuries. The priest extolled the proof of his devotion and from the pulpit announced invariable threats. Afterward he celebrated the mass for the dead and filled my ears with the rumor of a sinister psalm.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I have traversed the magic palace of the dream. I have fatigued myself in vain trying to discover the vestige of a woman absent from this world. I desired to reestablish her within my thoughts.
I conserve my emotions of a suffering and dejected adolescent. Her beauty adorned a street of ruins. I would begin to appear at her window amid the darkness of dusk. She exceeded me by a few years and I hid my delirious passion from slanderers.
She stopped appearing on a night of fears and anguish and I remembered unsuccessfully the signs of her home. A storm was flowing through the immensity.
I went on to vent the indelible melancholy in an adventure, where my friends got lost and died. Dawn found me in the precincts of a church, a monument erected by a maiden from other centuries. The priest extolled the proof of his devotion and from the pulpit announced invariable threats. Afterward he celebrated the mass for the dead and filled my ears with the rumor of a sinister psalm.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.10.2010
La ciudad de los espejismos / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The City of Mirages
I cultivate memories of my pensive childhood. An invisible bell tower, lost in darkness, rang the hour to return home, to gather myself in the room.
Solemn noises interrupted my sleep at each step. I believed I felt the parade of a procession and the rumor of its prayers. It was heading to the tomb of a hero, in a monastery of inflexible brothers, and passing through the street sunken brusquely in the languid river.
I would get up from where I lay, finding a path between the furniture on the dais, ceremonial hall, and would open the windows in secret. I uselessly insisted on distinguishing the funeral procession. A delirious glimpse wandered the skies.
I can’t mark the number of times I awoke and sought in vain. I would regain my bedroom in the dark, after reestablishing the order of the gems in the living room. A diabolical insect would provoke my annoyance by hiding swiftly in the thickness of the carpet.
The ruin of the walls had filled the deserted living room with dust. My grandparents, emphatic and stately, received no other visits besides death.
I was unable to shed the ghosts of sleep in the course of the vigil. The morning would invade my florid balcony with livid veneers and I would repose my sight on indifferent willows in the distance, in a Shakespearean reverie.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I cultivate memories of my pensive childhood. An invisible bell tower, lost in darkness, rang the hour to return home, to gather myself in the room.
Solemn noises interrupted my sleep at each step. I believed I felt the parade of a procession and the rumor of its prayers. It was heading to the tomb of a hero, in a monastery of inflexible brothers, and passing through the street sunken brusquely in the languid river.
I would get up from where I lay, finding a path between the furniture on the dais, ceremonial hall, and would open the windows in secret. I uselessly insisted on distinguishing the funeral procession. A delirious glimpse wandered the skies.
I can’t mark the number of times I awoke and sought in vain. I would regain my bedroom in the dark, after reestablishing the order of the gems in the living room. A diabolical insect would provoke my annoyance by hiding swiftly in the thickness of the carpet.
The ruin of the walls had filled the deserted living room with dust. My grandparents, emphatic and stately, received no other visits besides death.
I was unable to shed the ghosts of sleep in the course of the vigil. The morning would invade my florid balcony with livid veneers and I would repose my sight on indifferent willows in the distance, in a Shakespearean reverie.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.08.2010
Carta de amor / César Moro
Love Letter
I think of the holothurians who would often surround
us when dawn drew near
when your feet warmer then nests
burned in the night
with a blue and sparkling light
I think of your body that made the bed a sky and the
supreme mountains
of the only reality
with its valleys and its shadows
with humidity and marble and the black water reflecting
all the stars
in each eye
Wasn’t your smile the resonant forest of my childhood
weren’t you the spring
the stone chosen centuries ago to recline my head?
I think your face
immobile hot coal point of departure for the Milky Way
and that immense sorrow that makes me crazier than a
flaming agitated spider over the sea
Impossible when I remember you the human voice is odious
always the vegetable rumor of your words isolates me in
total night
where you shine with blackness more black than night
Every idea of blackness is too weak to express the long
ululation of black on black fervently
shining
I will never forget
But who speaks of oblivion
in the prison to which your absence leaves me
in the solitude to which this poem abandons me
in the exile where each hour finds me
I will no longer wake up
I will no longer resist the assault of the big waves
that come from the blessed landscape you inhabit
Outside under the nocturnal cold I wander
over that plank placed so high above and from where
one falls suddenly
Stiff beneath the terror of successive dreams agitated
in the wind
of years of reverie
warned of what ends up finding itself dead
in the threshold of deserted castles
at the time and place agreed upon but unfindable
in the fertile plains of paroxysm
and of the only objective
I place all my dexterity toward deciphering
that adored name
following its hallucinatory transformations
A sword cuts right through a beast already
or it’s a dove that falls bloody at my feet
turned into coral stone a support for the waste
of carnivorous birds
A repeated scream in each empty theater at the hour
of the indescribable
spectacle
A thread of water dancing before the red velvet
curtain
before the flames of the footlights
Disappeared the benches of the orchestra
I accumulate treasures of dead wood and vivid
leaves of corrosive silver
No longer content with cheering by howling
a thousand mummified families make a squirrel’s
step ignoble
Beloved decoration where I would see a fine rain
balance itself in a quick race towards the ermine
of a fur jacket abandoned in the heat of a dawn fire
that was trying to get a king to hear its complaints
thus I slide the window wide open over empty clouds
demanding that the darkness inundate my face
that it erase the indelible ink
of the horror of sleep
across patios abandoned to the pale maniacal vegetation
In vain I ask fire for thirst
in vain I wound the walls
in the distance oblivion’s precarious curtains fall
exhausted
facing the landscape that twists the tempest
[Mexico City, December of 1942]
Translator’s note: Originally written in French. Translated from the Spanish version by Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, published in Antología de la poesía hispanoamericana actual, ed. Julio Ortega, México DF: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2002.
{ César Moro | Peru, 1903-1956 }
I think of the holothurians who would often surround
us when dawn drew near
when your feet warmer then nests
burned in the night
with a blue and sparkling light
I think of your body that made the bed a sky and the
supreme mountains
of the only reality
with its valleys and its shadows
with humidity and marble and the black water reflecting
all the stars
in each eye
Wasn’t your smile the resonant forest of my childhood
weren’t you the spring
the stone chosen centuries ago to recline my head?
I think your face
immobile hot coal point of departure for the Milky Way
and that immense sorrow that makes me crazier than a
flaming agitated spider over the sea
Impossible when I remember you the human voice is odious
always the vegetable rumor of your words isolates me in
total night
where you shine with blackness more black than night
Every idea of blackness is too weak to express the long
ululation of black on black fervently
shining
I will never forget
But who speaks of oblivion
in the prison to which your absence leaves me
in the solitude to which this poem abandons me
in the exile where each hour finds me
I will no longer wake up
I will no longer resist the assault of the big waves
that come from the blessed landscape you inhabit
Outside under the nocturnal cold I wander
over that plank placed so high above and from where
one falls suddenly
Stiff beneath the terror of successive dreams agitated
in the wind
of years of reverie
warned of what ends up finding itself dead
in the threshold of deserted castles
at the time and place agreed upon but unfindable
in the fertile plains of paroxysm
and of the only objective
I place all my dexterity toward deciphering
that adored name
following its hallucinatory transformations
A sword cuts right through a beast already
or it’s a dove that falls bloody at my feet
turned into coral stone a support for the waste
of carnivorous birds
A repeated scream in each empty theater at the hour
of the indescribable
spectacle
A thread of water dancing before the red velvet
curtain
before the flames of the footlights
Disappeared the benches of the orchestra
I accumulate treasures of dead wood and vivid
leaves of corrosive silver
No longer content with cheering by howling
a thousand mummified families make a squirrel’s
step ignoble
Beloved decoration where I would see a fine rain
balance itself in a quick race towards the ermine
of a fur jacket abandoned in the heat of a dawn fire
that was trying to get a king to hear its complaints
thus I slide the window wide open over empty clouds
demanding that the darkness inundate my face
that it erase the indelible ink
of the horror of sleep
across patios abandoned to the pale maniacal vegetation
In vain I ask fire for thirst
in vain I wound the walls
in the distance oblivion’s precarious curtains fall
exhausted
facing the landscape that twists the tempest
[Mexico City, December of 1942]
Translator’s note: Originally written in French. Translated from the Spanish version by Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, published in Antología de la poesía hispanoamericana actual, ed. Julio Ortega, México DF: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2002.
{ César Moro | Peru, 1903-1956 }
4.07.2010
Omega / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Omega
When death finally arrives at my plea and its warnings have empowered me for the solitary journey, I will invoke a spring being, for the purpose of soliciting assistance from the harmony of supreme origin, and an infinite solace will settle on my countenance.
My relics, hidden in the womb of darkness and animated by a shapeless life, will respond from their exile to the magnetism of an unsettled voice, uttered on a naked coast.
The eloquent memory, similar to an exiguous moon over the view of a somnambulist bird, will disrupt my impersonal dream until the hour comes to plunge, with my name, into solemn oblivion.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
When death finally arrives at my plea and its warnings have empowered me for the solitary journey, I will invoke a spring being, for the purpose of soliciting assistance from the harmony of supreme origin, and an infinite solace will settle on my countenance.
My relics, hidden in the womb of darkness and animated by a shapeless life, will respond from their exile to the magnetism of an unsettled voice, uttered on a naked coast.
The eloquent memory, similar to an exiguous moon over the view of a somnambulist bird, will disrupt my impersonal dream until the hour comes to plunge, with my name, into solemn oblivion.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.06.2010
La redención de Fausto / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Redemption of Faust
Leonardo da Vinci enjoyed painting gaseous, shady figures. He left in the hands of Albrecht Dürer, inhabitant of Venice, a copy of La Gioconda, noted for her magic smile.
That same painting came to illuminate, days later, the estate of Faust.
The sage exhausted himself quarreling with his presumptuous bachelor, with his lace collar and sprats, and with Mephistopheles, predecessor of Hegel, obstinate in executing the synthesis of contraries, in mixing good with evil. Faust bade him farewell from his friendship and noted for the first time the absence of the woman.
Leonardo da Vinci’s spectral creature ceased being a captive image, placed her hand on the thinker’s shoulder and blew out his vigilant lamp.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Leonardo da Vinci enjoyed painting gaseous, shady figures. He left in the hands of Albrecht Dürer, inhabitant of Venice, a copy of La Gioconda, noted for her magic smile.
That same painting came to illuminate, days later, the estate of Faust.
The sage exhausted himself quarreling with his presumptuous bachelor, with his lace collar and sprats, and with Mephistopheles, predecessor of Hegel, obstinate in executing the synthesis of contraries, in mixing good with evil. Faust bade him farewell from his friendship and noted for the first time the absence of the woman.
Leonardo da Vinci’s spectral creature ceased being a captive image, placed her hand on the thinker’s shoulder and blew out his vigilant lamp.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.05.2010
Analogía / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Analogy
The solitary one laments a distant absence. He consoles himself by writing the difficult sonnet, where analysis often discovers a new sense.
The solitary one gets lost in the distinctions of his scholarly doctrine and satisfies the requirements of the art when the sunset paints the myrtle and the cypress black and marks their profiles.
The image of the absent one, with a countenance excavated by meditation and dressed in the nuances of fire, travels around the grove of squirrels and gazelles where the memory of Queen Guinevere endures.
The solitary one is enchanted in the transfiguration of the absent one and describes her merits, referring to the heraldic motive of the iris with steel leaves.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The solitary one laments a distant absence. He consoles himself by writing the difficult sonnet, where analysis often discovers a new sense.
The solitary one gets lost in the distinctions of his scholarly doctrine and satisfies the requirements of the art when the sunset paints the myrtle and the cypress black and marks their profiles.
The image of the absent one, with a countenance excavated by meditation and dressed in the nuances of fire, travels around the grove of squirrels and gazelles where the memory of Queen Guinevere endures.
The solitary one is enchanted in the transfiguration of the absent one and describes her merits, referring to the heraldic motive of the iris with steel leaves.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.04.2010
Siglos medios / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Middle Centuries
Klingsor, the dark magician, disappears from Earth when Saint Elizabeth of Hungary is born.
The Germans present him in a contest of troubadours. The search is on for the most liberal of contemporary magnates. The name of the King of France resounds amidst praises and is contrasted by that of prodigal landgraves. A manuscript from the era refers to the dispute and accuses the wizard of falsifying opinions and disturbing the trial. Klingsor deserves to figure in Shakespeare’s theater. He had become enemies with mankind when he succumbed in a gallant adventure. He was incurring in the excess of calling himself an heir and descendant of Virgil. The English dramatist, an enthusiast of Italy, was able to agree on this novelty and honor him with the nickname of Marquis of Capua, adopting a residue of the tradition.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Klingsor, the dark magician, disappears from Earth when Saint Elizabeth of Hungary is born.
The Germans present him in a contest of troubadours. The search is on for the most liberal of contemporary magnates. The name of the King of France resounds amidst praises and is contrasted by that of prodigal landgraves. A manuscript from the era refers to the dispute and accuses the wizard of falsifying opinions and disturbing the trial. Klingsor deserves to figure in Shakespeare’s theater. He had become enemies with mankind when he succumbed in a gallant adventure. He was incurring in the excess of calling himself an heir and descendant of Virgil. The English dramatist, an enthusiast of Italy, was able to agree on this novelty and honor him with the nickname of Marquis of Capua, adopting a residue of the tradition.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.02.2010
El retórico / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Rhetorician
A clay lamp, used by the Romans, outlines a shaded figure on the wall. The disciple of the Alexandrians combats the victory of Christianity, making the nonsense and ignorance of its founders look uncouth and eclipsing the austerity of the parishioners by means of an elegant and demure sobriety. He writes dissertations to contrast the stupid fable of the sons of the desert with the juvenile myth of the ancient Greeks. He observes an inferior humanity about him, stubbornly following a coarse and absurd doctrine and he becomes aware of the extinction of the privileged class of the senator and officiant. He looks at the universal conspiracy, directed towards the extermination of jubilation and the ruin of beauty, the return and definitive establishment of the ancient ghosts of chaos and nothingness and he throws himself into the arms of desperation. He has just heard about the sacrifice of Hypatia in a disorder of the masses, animated against the fame and existence of the select woman by the envy of a few uncouth monks, and he decides to take shelter and perish from hunger in the sanctuary of the Muses.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
A clay lamp, used by the Romans, outlines a shaded figure on the wall. The disciple of the Alexandrians combats the victory of Christianity, making the nonsense and ignorance of its founders look uncouth and eclipsing the austerity of the parishioners by means of an elegant and demure sobriety. He writes dissertations to contrast the stupid fable of the sons of the desert with the juvenile myth of the ancient Greeks. He observes an inferior humanity about him, stubbornly following a coarse and absurd doctrine and he becomes aware of the extinction of the privileged class of the senator and officiant. He looks at the universal conspiracy, directed towards the extermination of jubilation and the ruin of beauty, the return and definitive establishment of the ancient ghosts of chaos and nothingness and he throws himself into the arms of desperation. He has just heard about the sacrifice of Hypatia in a disorder of the masses, animated against the fame and existence of the select woman by the envy of a few uncouth monks, and he decides to take shelter and perish from hunger in the sanctuary of the Muses.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.01.2010
La ráfaga / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Gust
The marble nymphs spill the water from the fountain through the mouth of their carved pitchers. They are seated at the edge of the jasper cup and they gather and pour the directed waves by means of an artifice. The water poured from the carved pitchers animates the shade, sonorously wounding the ground.
The heroines of unhappy love gather in that spot at the same hour, for the confidence of their sorrows. A higher will locks them in the humid garden, where glimpses of a cardinal light play.
They alternately refer to the story of their misfortune and add lamentable canticles.
The heroines release a scream and launch themselves in several directions when they feel the birth of a distant roar. The passing of a misty gust dissolves the fantastical garden and its violet gloss, and leaves in its place a darkness full of moans.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The marble nymphs spill the water from the fountain through the mouth of their carved pitchers. They are seated at the edge of the jasper cup and they gather and pour the directed waves by means of an artifice. The water poured from the carved pitchers animates the shade, sonorously wounding the ground.
The heroines of unhappy love gather in that spot at the same hour, for the confidence of their sorrows. A higher will locks them in the humid garden, where glimpses of a cardinal light play.
They alternately refer to the story of their misfortune and add lamentable canticles.
The heroines release a scream and launch themselves in several directions when they feel the birth of a distant roar. The passing of a misty gust dissolves the fantastical garden and its violet gloss, and leaves in its place a darkness full of moans.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)