The Branch of the Sibyl
The song of health flies over the cheerful sea, rises to the opal sky. It serves to distinguish the moments of the maneuver. Neither the spokesman nor the laconic command are required.
I have said goodbye to the vestiges of an unfortunate vision upon incorporating myself to the night’s lap. An immortal voice had insinuated in my ears the canorous verse by Virgil, to describe for me the shipwreck of a helmsman conquered by sleep.
I reconstructed the details of the episode when I awoke and returned to my accord. I immediately recognized the coast where the shipwrecked sailor was sacrificed once he emerged alive.
I had within reach an olive branch, the mystical and virtuous tree. I submerged it in the livid waters and shook it over my indifferent companions.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.23.2010
Mar latino / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Latin Sea
I am glossing the passage in the Iliad where the old men from Troy confess Helen’s beauty. A flowering woman with the same name listens to me. We both feel the solemnity of that moment in the epic and await the clamor of the disaster suspended over the city.
Agamemnon, the king of a thousand ships, can hurry, inventing surnames, the unfolding of the battle.
The succession of sea glints, present in Homer’s memory, disappears under the single tint of blood.
The woman invites me to stop recounting the fabulous calamities and to follow the trail of a more serene fantasy, in demand of some islands in the west. Horace would remember them when he wanted to rest from contemporary evil.
I set forth on the unreal excursion using the lapidary residuals of a lost legend. Our vessel solicits, by sail and oar, the sunset’s chimerical gardens. We have entrusted ourselves to a pilot from the Aeneid. His name today designates a promontory of the Tyrrhenian.
The magic voice of my companion scatters the sirens boasting about their hair, which is tangled with algae and corals, and quiet in a mournful song. She invites, under the sky of vanished light, the host of subterranean larva, messengers from a spectral world.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I am glossing the passage in the Iliad where the old men from Troy confess Helen’s beauty. A flowering woman with the same name listens to me. We both feel the solemnity of that moment in the epic and await the clamor of the disaster suspended over the city.
Agamemnon, the king of a thousand ships, can hurry, inventing surnames, the unfolding of the battle.
The succession of sea glints, present in Homer’s memory, disappears under the single tint of blood.
The woman invites me to stop recounting the fabulous calamities and to follow the trail of a more serene fantasy, in demand of some islands in the west. Horace would remember them when he wanted to rest from contemporary evil.
I set forth on the unreal excursion using the lapidary residuals of a lost legend. Our vessel solicits, by sail and oar, the sunset’s chimerical gardens. We have entrusted ourselves to a pilot from the Aeneid. His name today designates a promontory of the Tyrrhenian.
The magic voice of my companion scatters the sirens boasting about their hair, which is tangled with algae and corals, and quiet in a mournful song. She invites, under the sky of vanished light, the host of subterranean larva, messengers from a spectral world.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.22.2010
Fragmento apócrifo de Pausanias / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Apocryphal Fragment from Pausanias
Theseus pursued the army of the Amazons, captured their queen and seduced her. The troop of women fled over the frozen Bosphorus, riding horses of utmost arrogance. One of them died in the place that bears her name, where Athenians remember and honor her. The fugitives were once again lost in the steppe of their birth, aided by the mist.
An anonymous author refers to the brave acts of the son of Theseus and the captive Amazon. He dared to solicit the love of a priestess from a severe religion, dedicated to a telluric divinity, venerated and feared by Asiatic slaves.
The licentious young man caught a rare disease of the mind and was wandering delirious through the city and its countryside, threatening to become a wolf.
Theseus listens to the opinion of memorious travelers, habituated to the ship and the caravan, and sends for a doctor all the way to the Nile valley.
The wise man presented himself a month later and was able to cure the delirious young man by means of the word and by wrapping him up in the smoke of a balsamic resin.
Theseus trusted in the medicine of the Egyptians and considered them the healthiest and most long-lived people on Earth.
The doctor left behind, in memory of his presence, an effigy of his person. I have seen it among the simulacra and essays of a rudimentary art.
The figure of the Egyptian, with a naked skull, was displaying the patient and self-absorbed attitude of a scribe from his nation.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Theseus pursued the army of the Amazons, captured their queen and seduced her. The troop of women fled over the frozen Bosphorus, riding horses of utmost arrogance. One of them died in the place that bears her name, where Athenians remember and honor her. The fugitives were once again lost in the steppe of their birth, aided by the mist.
An anonymous author refers to the brave acts of the son of Theseus and the captive Amazon. He dared to solicit the love of a priestess from a severe religion, dedicated to a telluric divinity, venerated and feared by Asiatic slaves.
The licentious young man caught a rare disease of the mind and was wandering delirious through the city and its countryside, threatening to become a wolf.
Theseus listens to the opinion of memorious travelers, habituated to the ship and the caravan, and sends for a doctor all the way to the Nile valley.
The wise man presented himself a month later and was able to cure the delirious young man by means of the word and by wrapping him up in the smoke of a balsamic resin.
Theseus trusted in the medicine of the Egyptians and considered them the healthiest and most long-lived people on Earth.
The doctor left behind, in memory of his presence, an effigy of his person. I have seen it among the simulacra and essays of a rudimentary art.
The figure of the Egyptian, with a naked skull, was displaying the patient and self-absorbed attitude of a scribe from his nation.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.21.2010
Santiago de León de Caracas / William Osuna
Santiago de León de Caracas
This earth is mine and mine
these women
you I haven’t seen before
I made signs at you
from naked alleys and you didn’t find me.
City of arrogant towers
noise of stone and thorn
sprouts from the deep iron.
This is the erased word, light as a cloud
this is the hour of din
hardest walls like hurricane hands
and the morning burns and the heat is indecipherable.
In the plazas in the cliffs
in this ring of sadness where they hammer the passage
the future caterpillars tend to face off the winds
turn back the bites
scratch themselves slowly in meaningless limitations
a people with ropes at their neck.
Everything is a confusion of faces
in the gloom
horses that want to burst into
the halls of vintage
single houses, funereal rooftops, regions for disenchantment
and not for a mouth in the mouth:
slaughter of birds and sheep.
Central avenue where millions of dead walk
Everyday places public offices
No one gets excited about the beautiful or the ugly.
Confused city Festive city
the grey arc lies over Caracas and in this beautiful piece
of the world.
Generous water so lovely
faithful and true
cloak of the humble.
Beautiful women Piled up cars
I’ll speak of other matters later,
a multitude with an unrevealed name
discovers its secret and attacks.
Antología de la mala calle (1990)
{ William Osuna, Miré los muros de la patria mía, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
This earth is mine and mine
these women
you I haven’t seen before
I made signs at you
from naked alleys and you didn’t find me.
City of arrogant towers
noise of stone and thorn
sprouts from the deep iron.
This is the erased word, light as a cloud
this is the hour of din
hardest walls like hurricane hands
and the morning burns and the heat is indecipherable.
In the plazas in the cliffs
in this ring of sadness where they hammer the passage
the future caterpillars tend to face off the winds
turn back the bites
scratch themselves slowly in meaningless limitations
a people with ropes at their neck.
Everything is a confusion of faces
in the gloom
horses that want to burst into
the halls of vintage
single houses, funereal rooftops, regions for disenchantment
and not for a mouth in the mouth:
slaughter of birds and sheep.
Central avenue where millions of dead walk
Everyday places public offices
No one gets excited about the beautiful or the ugly.
Confused city Festive city
the grey arc lies over Caracas and in this beautiful piece
of the world.
Generous water so lovely
faithful and true
cloak of the humble.
Beautiful women Piled up cars
I’ll speak of other matters later,
a multitude with an unrevealed name
discovers its secret and attacks.
Antología de la mala calle (1990)
{ William Osuna, Miré los muros de la patria mía, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
5.20.2010
La peregrina de la selva profética / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Pilgrim of the Prophetic Jungle
The Castilian woman roams the forest. Her song awakens the density. The trees return from the drowsiness of the night and its fog.
The languid voice declares affections and memories of absence. It mentions the only brother, fascinated, at the beginning of his youth, by the example of tough leaders in ultramarine kingdoms. He departed on a fast horse, conqueror of dragons, and an eagle was following the hero’s flight.
A traveler supplies a quick piece of news, laboriously recalled after the anxiety of an impassable sea.
The hero has been lost amidst a labyrinth of mountains, where indifferent roads cross each other and the spring of a nameless river is born, nourished by the rains.
The entire forest exhales compassionate voices, and a poplar, the most beautiful of all, planted by the absent one, has collapsed onto the simple source.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The Castilian woman roams the forest. Her song awakens the density. The trees return from the drowsiness of the night and its fog.
The languid voice declares affections and memories of absence. It mentions the only brother, fascinated, at the beginning of his youth, by the example of tough leaders in ultramarine kingdoms. He departed on a fast horse, conqueror of dragons, and an eagle was following the hero’s flight.
A traveler supplies a quick piece of news, laboriously recalled after the anxiety of an impassable sea.
The hero has been lost amidst a labyrinth of mountains, where indifferent roads cross each other and the spring of a nameless river is born, nourished by the rains.
The entire forest exhales compassionate voices, and a poplar, the most beautiful of all, planted by the absent one, has collapsed onto the simple source.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.18.2010
El tesoro de la fuente cegada / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Treasure of the Blinded Fountain
I was living in the impassable city, desolated by divine vengeance. The ground, work of forgotten cataclysms, was divided into precipices and mountains, links scattered at random. The ancient inhabitants had perished, a soulless and crude nation.
A yellow sun was illuminating that country of ashen forests, of hypnotic shadows, of illusory echoes.
I was occupying a millenary building, festooned by the spontaneous undergrowth, an example of an architecture of cyclops, ignorant of steel.
The escape of the wild elk was alarming the birdless jungles.
You were succumbing to the memory of the native sea and its kingfishers. Your were imagining that with moans and prayers you could overcome the fatality of that exile, and you were occupying some interval of consolation by musing ballads erased from your afflicted memory.
The storm was mussing your hair, the increase of a gaunt figure, and its retinue of lightning was startling your violet eyes.
Your sorrow silenced your voice, plunging you into an inert drowsiness. I laid your recumbent body in the lap of a blinded fountain, hoping for your awakening after an expiatory cycle.
I was then able to cross the border of the evil country, and I escaped sailing on an extreme sea in a deserted vessel, guided by an unscathed light.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I was living in the impassable city, desolated by divine vengeance. The ground, work of forgotten cataclysms, was divided into precipices and mountains, links scattered at random. The ancient inhabitants had perished, a soulless and crude nation.
A yellow sun was illuminating that country of ashen forests, of hypnotic shadows, of illusory echoes.
I was occupying a millenary building, festooned by the spontaneous undergrowth, an example of an architecture of cyclops, ignorant of steel.
The escape of the wild elk was alarming the birdless jungles.
You were succumbing to the memory of the native sea and its kingfishers. Your were imagining that with moans and prayers you could overcome the fatality of that exile, and you were occupying some interval of consolation by musing ballads erased from your afflicted memory.
The storm was mussing your hair, the increase of a gaunt figure, and its retinue of lightning was startling your violet eyes.
Your sorrow silenced your voice, plunging you into an inert drowsiness. I laid your recumbent body in the lap of a blinded fountain, hoping for your awakening after an expiatory cycle.
I was then able to cross the border of the evil country, and I escaped sailing on an extreme sea in a deserted vessel, guided by an unscathed light.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.17.2010
Geórgica / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Georgic
The mourners, carrying cypress branches, were stepping on the trail of tombs. They were singing in one voice slow lamentations, of intimate tenderness, extinguished in a compressed space. These moans, propagated in the plantation, were dying in the light of a livid sunset. Everyone was dressed in white linen for the procession occupied in pleasing the manes.
A woman was advancing amid the concourse, gathered for the anniversary of her daughter, a maiden who had died the previous autumn; and she was presiding it with the dignity of a venerable feeling. The retinue was made up of peasants, who came from the remote places of the countryside, sensitive to the memory of the deceased virgin, and willing to sublimate her with the titles of new rural deity, tutelary of their farm work.
They continued until alighting upon a ledge, where a few stones, pushed up against an austere tree, were defending the grave and making up an altar’s table. They quit the song for the sacrifice of a black animal, dedicated to the dark powers, according to an immemorial rite; and two graceful young men paid tribute to the first appearance of her numen, persisting in overcoming the lamentations.
They recalled the girl’s beauty, the contemporaneous wonders of her death and the act of burying her under an opaque rain. They all became quiet at the first annunciation of the moon, and its scarce splendor, left a symbolic burning torch, and split up and departed consoled by the gentle night.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The mourners, carrying cypress branches, were stepping on the trail of tombs. They were singing in one voice slow lamentations, of intimate tenderness, extinguished in a compressed space. These moans, propagated in the plantation, were dying in the light of a livid sunset. Everyone was dressed in white linen for the procession occupied in pleasing the manes.
A woman was advancing amid the concourse, gathered for the anniversary of her daughter, a maiden who had died the previous autumn; and she was presiding it with the dignity of a venerable feeling. The retinue was made up of peasants, who came from the remote places of the countryside, sensitive to the memory of the deceased virgin, and willing to sublimate her with the titles of new rural deity, tutelary of their farm work.
They continued until alighting upon a ledge, where a few stones, pushed up against an austere tree, were defending the grave and making up an altar’s table. They quit the song for the sacrifice of a black animal, dedicated to the dark powers, according to an immemorial rite; and two graceful young men paid tribute to the first appearance of her numen, persisting in overcoming the lamentations.
They recalled the girl’s beauty, the contemporaneous wonders of her death and the act of burying her under an opaque rain. They all became quiet at the first annunciation of the moon, and its scarce splendor, left a symbolic burning torch, and split up and departed consoled by the gentle night.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.15.2010
El culpable / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Guilty One
I agonized in the ruined summer mansion, forgotten in a deep valley.
Fauns and other garden simulacra were lying on the ground.
The steam from the humidity was clouding the air.
The thickets were decaying the trees of classical lineage.
Some rubble was stagnating, in front of my retreat, an exhausted river.
My voices of pain were prolonging themselves in the dark valley. A strange evil was disfiguring my organism.
The doctors were using, amidst their uncertainty, the cruelest resources of their art. They were lavishing scarification and cautery.
I recall the happy occasion, when I felt the start of the illness. We were celebrating, after midnight, the arrival of a foreigner and her arrogant beauty. The heavy bronze lamp suddenly fell on the banquet table.
I was glimpsing in the course of my dreams, a pause in the desperation, a maiden of seraphic countenance, fugitive in the whirlwind of the sendals of her garb. I was imploring her on my knees and with my hands clasped together.
My nature triumphed, after a long time, over the ferocious evil. I emerged thin and tremulous.
As soon as I recovered, I visited a family of my affection, and I found the virgin of the candid face, solace of my past bitterness.
She was paying attention to a crepuscular melody.
The memory of my misplacement was filling me with confusion and making me blush. I was contemplating her respectfully.
She dismissed me, indignant, from her presence.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I agonized in the ruined summer mansion, forgotten in a deep valley.
Fauns and other garden simulacra were lying on the ground.
The steam from the humidity was clouding the air.
The thickets were decaying the trees of classical lineage.
Some rubble was stagnating, in front of my retreat, an exhausted river.
My voices of pain were prolonging themselves in the dark valley. A strange evil was disfiguring my organism.
The doctors were using, amidst their uncertainty, the cruelest resources of their art. They were lavishing scarification and cautery.
I recall the happy occasion, when I felt the start of the illness. We were celebrating, after midnight, the arrival of a foreigner and her arrogant beauty. The heavy bronze lamp suddenly fell on the banquet table.
I was glimpsing in the course of my dreams, a pause in the desperation, a maiden of seraphic countenance, fugitive in the whirlwind of the sendals of her garb. I was imploring her on my knees and with my hands clasped together.
My nature triumphed, after a long time, over the ferocious evil. I emerged thin and tremulous.
As soon as I recovered, I visited a family of my affection, and I found the virgin of the candid face, solace of my past bitterness.
She was paying attention to a crepuscular melody.
The memory of my misplacement was filling me with confusion and making me blush. I was contemplating her respectfully.
She dismissed me, indignant, from her presence.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.14.2010
Paisaje del mar desierto / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Landscape of the Desert Sea
The vessel crosses the inhospitable sea, where the uniform sky paints glosses of a steel color. The light wanders horizontally, oppressed by the dim air, originating from a smoky sun; the vessel’s black volume interrupts the immensity.
The drizzle lulls the rough sea, occupying the constant hours; and the dark horizon limits the inert water, surrounds an abyss where life sleeps.
The balance of the vessel diminishes silence; and the fuscous air spreads unsettled crystals, mitigating the red glow of a pendulum harbor beacon.
The vessel is served by sailors of grim calm, who repose from the maneuver observing without hope; they confront the nebulous day and obscure night, and lavish the deed in solitude, henchmen of an unconquered pride.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The vessel crosses the inhospitable sea, where the uniform sky paints glosses of a steel color. The light wanders horizontally, oppressed by the dim air, originating from a smoky sun; the vessel’s black volume interrupts the immensity.
The drizzle lulls the rough sea, occupying the constant hours; and the dark horizon limits the inert water, surrounds an abyss where life sleeps.
The balance of the vessel diminishes silence; and the fuscous air spreads unsettled crystals, mitigating the red glow of a pendulum harbor beacon.
The vessel is served by sailors of grim calm, who repose from the maneuver observing without hope; they confront the nebulous day and obscure night, and lavish the deed in solitude, henchmen of an unconquered pride.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.12.2010
Tácita, la musa décima / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Tacita, the Tenth Muse
The beautiful woman was speaking of the uncertainty of her future. She had reached the withering age and was feeling the threat of time and solitude. Men hadn’t noticed her merits and they feared her alert intelligence.
The woman’s discourse was wounding and exhausting my sensibility. Her luck was inspiring me with desperate ideas about life. That being was suffering from her own perfection.
I have cruelly separated her from my presence. She could interrupt my clandestine escape, through the orgy of the world, toward the lethargic embrace of death. I was glimpsing a more sedating distance whenever I would imagine the annulment of my relics in the heart of the planet blinded by snow, from the moment the sun’s millennial energy was extinguished, according to predictions by a seer of astronomy.
My insipid days anticipate the indifferent dream of eternity.
The author of my disquiet affectionately approaches the coffin where I lie before dying. Her onyx lamp, deposited on the floor, throws a soft glow and her abnegation is drawn in the act of sealing with her index finger the hermetic lips, decreeing silence.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The beautiful woman was speaking of the uncertainty of her future. She had reached the withering age and was feeling the threat of time and solitude. Men hadn’t noticed her merits and they feared her alert intelligence.
The woman’s discourse was wounding and exhausting my sensibility. Her luck was inspiring me with desperate ideas about life. That being was suffering from her own perfection.
I have cruelly separated her from my presence. She could interrupt my clandestine escape, through the orgy of the world, toward the lethargic embrace of death. I was glimpsing a more sedating distance whenever I would imagine the annulment of my relics in the heart of the planet blinded by snow, from the moment the sun’s millennial energy was extinguished, according to predictions by a seer of astronomy.
My insipid days anticipate the indifferent dream of eternity.
The author of my disquiet affectionately approaches the coffin where I lie before dying. Her onyx lamp, deposited on the floor, throws a soft glow and her abnegation is drawn in the act of sealing with her index finger the hermetic lips, decreeing silence.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.11.2010
El alumno de Tersites / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Thersites’s Student
I had interned myself in the jungle of sedative shadows, where according to tradition the equestrian god of sunset would rest. He was a Sagittarian retired from the world and removed from happiness and because of that he received the punishment of an anticipated death. The numen of light mourned him continuously and entrusted him with the day’s ambiguous hour.
His beloved had received the favor of immortality and was wandering the paths and crossing the mountain’s depths, where the same hour reigned perpetually, in sight of the violet colored clouds.
A supreme thought had made her mute.
The thicket was making a carpet at her feet and the trees, dreaming with the glowing midday, were throwing a rain of martyred flowers on her head.
I had interned myself in the wild solitude, taking as a companion the jester exiled from the court. He spoke his repartee in the form of an argument, cheerfully parodying scholars and doctors. Shakespeare curses him in one of his dramas. He had incurred, out of imprudence, the anger of a venerable king and his daughters.
The jester spoke, with festive tone, to the woman of the forest in question, elevated to the same privilege as divine people, of treading the earth with naked and unharmed feet.
The enraptured forest suddenly became a stony ground and the lightning’s whip lashed the fig trees condemned to sterility.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I had interned myself in the jungle of sedative shadows, where according to tradition the equestrian god of sunset would rest. He was a Sagittarian retired from the world and removed from happiness and because of that he received the punishment of an anticipated death. The numen of light mourned him continuously and entrusted him with the day’s ambiguous hour.
His beloved had received the favor of immortality and was wandering the paths and crossing the mountain’s depths, where the same hour reigned perpetually, in sight of the violet colored clouds.
A supreme thought had made her mute.
The thicket was making a carpet at her feet and the trees, dreaming with the glowing midday, were throwing a rain of martyred flowers on her head.
I had interned myself in the wild solitude, taking as a companion the jester exiled from the court. He spoke his repartee in the form of an argument, cheerfully parodying scholars and doctors. Shakespeare curses him in one of his dramas. He had incurred, out of imprudence, the anger of a venerable king and his daughters.
The jester spoke, with festive tone, to the woman of the forest in question, elevated to the same privilege as divine people, of treading the earth with naked and unharmed feet.
The enraptured forest suddenly became a stony ground and the lightning’s whip lashed the fig trees condemned to sterility.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.10.2010
El lapidario / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Lapidarist
The feeling of rhythm was guiding the woman’s actions and discourse. Dante would have pointed out the value of the magic figures had he critiqued the dates of her birth and death.
Her ashes came back from exile in a secular country. Love dallied, from the taciturn ship, a branch of white lilies in the sea of funereal waves.
I was sighting from a height the arrival of her relics and the escort of mourners and I abstained from taking part in the mourning.
I have drawn by chisel strokes a secret sign on the face of a volcanic stone, respected amidst the coastal erosion and a neighbor to the port of return.
The sign understands my name and that of the deceased and has been sculpted with the exquisiteness of an elaborate letter. I have invented it to awaken in newcomers, who trust they will draw the meaning, an ineffable yearning and inevitable discontent.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The feeling of rhythm was guiding the woman’s actions and discourse. Dante would have pointed out the value of the magic figures had he critiqued the dates of her birth and death.
Her ashes came back from exile in a secular country. Love dallied, from the taciturn ship, a branch of white lilies in the sea of funereal waves.
I was sighting from a height the arrival of her relics and the escort of mourners and I abstained from taking part in the mourning.
I have drawn by chisel strokes a secret sign on the face of a volcanic stone, respected amidst the coastal erosion and a neighbor to the port of return.
The sign understands my name and that of the deceased and has been sculpted with the exquisiteness of an elaborate letter. I have invented it to awaken in newcomers, who trust they will draw the meaning, an ineffable yearning and inevitable discontent.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.09.2010
Lucía / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Lucia
I was opening the windows of the naked chamber and entrusting the name of the absent girl to the errors of an insalubrious gust of wind. My voice was fighting a gravestone, imitating the seabird’s assault on the harbor beacon.
I was guessing the clear accents of dawn, emerging from my retreat and stepping with reverence and fear on the flight of steps corroded by the open air. I was entertaining sorrow with the view of a diaphanous horizon. The ash tree and the pine were abounding far off and haphazardly in the country of lakes and torrents.
I was censuring myself faithfully. I wanted to find a slip of ineptitude or apathy in the process of her inhuman pains and I couldn’t remember anything besides my activity and my continuous presence in the room. Her death reproduced the countenance of the agony of Jesus.
The slow mists were being born, when night began, from the wells of rainwater, they would calm the noises and lose themselves in the hallucinated home.
The veils of malarial water facilitated the return of the assiduous virgin. She agreed to leave in my hands, a sign of acknowledgment, the jewel of her candor. She gave me back the crown of her forehead.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I was opening the windows of the naked chamber and entrusting the name of the absent girl to the errors of an insalubrious gust of wind. My voice was fighting a gravestone, imitating the seabird’s assault on the harbor beacon.
I was guessing the clear accents of dawn, emerging from my retreat and stepping with reverence and fear on the flight of steps corroded by the open air. I was entertaining sorrow with the view of a diaphanous horizon. The ash tree and the pine were abounding far off and haphazardly in the country of lakes and torrents.
I was censuring myself faithfully. I wanted to find a slip of ineptitude or apathy in the process of her inhuman pains and I couldn’t remember anything besides my activity and my continuous presence in the room. Her death reproduced the countenance of the agony of Jesus.
The slow mists were being born, when night began, from the wells of rainwater, they would calm the noises and lose themselves in the hallucinated home.
The veils of malarial water facilitated the return of the assiduous virgin. She agreed to leave in my hands, a sign of acknowledgment, the jewel of her candor. She gave me back the crown of her forehead.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.08.2010
La canonesa / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Canoness
I visited the city of penumbra and of freezing colors and annoyance and melancholy ensued to hinder my will.
The sun from a month of rain was provoking the full moon spell in the mirror of the glacial floor. I went out to amuse my sight through the streets and plazas and asked the name of the statues dressed in ivy. Prelates and gentlemen, from the lofty plinths, infused the nostalgia of the armed centuries of an Episcopal republic.
A sculpted and chiseled church was imitating the one for St. Sebald in ancient Nuremberg. The images on the door reproduced the countenance of the eagle, of the lion and the ox.
The natives worked very hard in the fabrication of infant toys, angelic theorbos, psalteries and lutes. A maiden separated me from the reverence towards archaic monuments, she granted me the privilege of her friendship and wine while referring me to her somber life, an example of simplicity and sacrifice. She was offering her youth to the memory of a brother deceased before his time and was replacing him, keeping herself pure and celibate, in the council of a military order.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I visited the city of penumbra and of freezing colors and annoyance and melancholy ensued to hinder my will.
The sun from a month of rain was provoking the full moon spell in the mirror of the glacial floor. I went out to amuse my sight through the streets and plazas and asked the name of the statues dressed in ivy. Prelates and gentlemen, from the lofty plinths, infused the nostalgia of the armed centuries of an Episcopal republic.
A sculpted and chiseled church was imitating the one for St. Sebald in ancient Nuremberg. The images on the door reproduced the countenance of the eagle, of the lion and the ox.
The natives worked very hard in the fabrication of infant toys, angelic theorbos, psalteries and lutes. A maiden separated me from the reverence towards archaic monuments, she granted me the privilege of her friendship and wine while referring me to her somber life, an example of simplicity and sacrifice. She was offering her youth to the memory of a brother deceased before his time and was replacing him, keeping herself pure and celibate, in the council of a military order.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.07.2010
Vestigio / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Vestige
Your luck was instilling the sorrow of an annulled illusion, of an escaped and distant happiness; your exotic distinction was lending importance to the unending misfortune of an anomalous life. I was listening to your lamentations of a weak creature, threatened and fugitive.
You were dressed in blue and white, the colors of the momentary wave; and your eyes, with an amazed and distant glance, were condensing a nostalgic oceanic panorama. I was celebrating your daybreak and taciturn beauty of a northern bird.
You were decorating the afternoon; and I remember then the sunset’s melancholy was growing and the patrician city was being inundated by a stormy irruption of fog, indomitable messenger of the sea.
Benevolent death took you while sleeping to its dark and vain limbo; but your winged image, conqueror of oblivion, humiliates the weeds of my sealed garden with a supernatural marble whiteness.
La torre de Timón (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Your luck was instilling the sorrow of an annulled illusion, of an escaped and distant happiness; your exotic distinction was lending importance to the unending misfortune of an anomalous life. I was listening to your lamentations of a weak creature, threatened and fugitive.
You were dressed in blue and white, the colors of the momentary wave; and your eyes, with an amazed and distant glance, were condensing a nostalgic oceanic panorama. I was celebrating your daybreak and taciturn beauty of a northern bird.
You were decorating the afternoon; and I remember then the sunset’s melancholy was growing and the patrician city was being inundated by a stormy irruption of fog, indomitable messenger of the sea.
Benevolent death took you while sleeping to its dark and vain limbo; but your winged image, conqueror of oblivion, humiliates the weeds of my sealed garden with a supernatural marble whiteness.
La torre de Timón (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.06.2010
Elogio de la soledad / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
In Praise of Solitude
Some would deem solitude the sinecure of the cowardly and the indifferent, in opposition to the criteria of the saints who renounced the world and by which they had a stopover of perfection and a port of contentment. In the dispute the authors of the ascetic opinion accredit superior wisdom. It will always be necessary for the cultivators of beauty and good, those consecrated by misfortune, to take shelter in the mute asylum of solitude, perhaps the only refuge of those who seem to be from another time, disconcerted by progress. Too tall for egotism, they are not obeyed by many who separate themselves from their fellow men. Such a resolution often favors the opposite cause, because it was thus invoked by a man in his discharge:
Indifference does not taint my solitary life; past and present pains move me; I have felt myself a prisoner in the slave quarters; I have staggered with the drunk helots to inspire a love of restraint; I blush from ignominious slavery; I am hurt by the invincible melancholy of the conquered races. The captives of Muslim barbarism, the persecuted Jews in Russia, the miserable who are piled up at night like the dead in the city of the Thames, are my brothers and I love them. I take up the newspaper, not like the financier to have news of his fortune, but rather so I can have news of my family, which is all of humanity. I don’t avoid my sentinel’s duty toward all that is weak and is beautiful, retiring to my cell of study; I am the friend to the paladins who vainly sought death in the risk of the final long and disgraced battle, and my memory is the forsaken cypress over the grave of the anonymous heroes. I am not ashamed of chivalrous tributes nor of antiquated gallantries, nor do I abstain from plucking in the mud of vice the dislodged pearl of dew. I avoid the parallel abysses of flesh and death, taking pleasure in the pure affection of glory; at night in dreams I hear its promises and I am, by the miracle of that love, as free from earthly ties as that mystic when he knew he was loved by the mother of Jesus. History has told me that in the Middle Ages the noble souls were all extinguished in the cloisters, and that the evil were left with the dominion and population of the world; and experience, which confirms this teaching, when it gives me proof of the veracity that Cervantes made his hero sterile, forces me to imitate the Sun, singular, generous and proud.
Thus was solitude defended by one, whose afflicted spirit was so sensible, that he could be represented by the image of a lake in accord even with the most tenuous aura, and in whose heart would be prolonged all noises, until they sounded remote.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Some would deem solitude the sinecure of the cowardly and the indifferent, in opposition to the criteria of the saints who renounced the world and by which they had a stopover of perfection and a port of contentment. In the dispute the authors of the ascetic opinion accredit superior wisdom. It will always be necessary for the cultivators of beauty and good, those consecrated by misfortune, to take shelter in the mute asylum of solitude, perhaps the only refuge of those who seem to be from another time, disconcerted by progress. Too tall for egotism, they are not obeyed by many who separate themselves from their fellow men. Such a resolution often favors the opposite cause, because it was thus invoked by a man in his discharge:
Indifference does not taint my solitary life; past and present pains move me; I have felt myself a prisoner in the slave quarters; I have staggered with the drunk helots to inspire a love of restraint; I blush from ignominious slavery; I am hurt by the invincible melancholy of the conquered races. The captives of Muslim barbarism, the persecuted Jews in Russia, the miserable who are piled up at night like the dead in the city of the Thames, are my brothers and I love them. I take up the newspaper, not like the financier to have news of his fortune, but rather so I can have news of my family, which is all of humanity. I don’t avoid my sentinel’s duty toward all that is weak and is beautiful, retiring to my cell of study; I am the friend to the paladins who vainly sought death in the risk of the final long and disgraced battle, and my memory is the forsaken cypress over the grave of the anonymous heroes. I am not ashamed of chivalrous tributes nor of antiquated gallantries, nor do I abstain from plucking in the mud of vice the dislodged pearl of dew. I avoid the parallel abysses of flesh and death, taking pleasure in the pure affection of glory; at night in dreams I hear its promises and I am, by the miracle of that love, as free from earthly ties as that mystic when he knew he was loved by the mother of Jesus. History has told me that in the Middle Ages the noble souls were all extinguished in the cloisters, and that the evil were left with the dominion and population of the world; and experience, which confirms this teaching, when it gives me proof of the veracity that Cervantes made his hero sterile, forces me to imitate the Sun, singular, generous and proud.
Thus was solitude defended by one, whose afflicted spirit was so sensible, that he could be represented by the image of a lake in accord even with the most tenuous aura, and in whose heart would be prolonged all noises, until they sounded remote.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.04.2010
XXV / Eduardo Mariño
XXV
1.
Outside the storm rages with great obstinacy, erratic and at the same time perfectly nailed with its glimmers, in the trembling of your glance.
2.
Do you still hear me? Do you know how many accounts hang from the lightning’s tail? Who knows?
3.
Fate is a gust of wind that spatters our face with mud and fresh rain; Fate is a vile ruse by the gods to hide their incompetence.
4.
Lift your face, the flash.
5.
Tell me if you’re still raining.
6.
Let out a slow and sincere sigh, like the breathing of eras across the sky’s unarmed skin; feel the murmur under your steps.
7.
No, don’t go now, it’s cold and my hands are stiff with fear.
8.
Have you noticed?, something joins us with sickly indifference or apparent desolation; I’m starting to think we never came from where we thought we did and that we’ll never get to where we’re going; this is a harsh portrait of the Earth’s sorrows, its crushed entrails and my thought in your eyes, sad and nearly consumed, by the rays and the thunder, and the hours, and my infantile harassment, and [...] well, some things I don’t understand.
9.
These notes grow day by day, and I have the firm conviction that the movements I predict in your hair aren’t due merely to the storm, there’s a rhythmic premonition and minor swings of reproach that prefigure eventual fractures of the sacrament.
10.
No, the roof won’t give in yet, I promise.
11.
Let it keep raining, and if by chance I close my eyes, Yaddith will have ceased shining in them.
Por si los dioses mueren (1995)
{ Eduardo Mariño, A la salida del fastuoso recital, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2009 }
1.
Outside the storm rages with great obstinacy, erratic and at the same time perfectly nailed with its glimmers, in the trembling of your glance.
2.
Do you still hear me? Do you know how many accounts hang from the lightning’s tail? Who knows?
3.
Fate is a gust of wind that spatters our face with mud and fresh rain; Fate is a vile ruse by the gods to hide their incompetence.
4.
Lift your face, the flash.
5.
Tell me if you’re still raining.
6.
Let out a slow and sincere sigh, like the breathing of eras across the sky’s unarmed skin; feel the murmur under your steps.
7.
No, don’t go now, it’s cold and my hands are stiff with fear.
8.
Have you noticed?, something joins us with sickly indifference or apparent desolation; I’m starting to think we never came from where we thought we did and that we’ll never get to where we’re going; this is a harsh portrait of the Earth’s sorrows, its crushed entrails and my thought in your eyes, sad and nearly consumed, by the rays and the thunder, and the hours, and my infantile harassment, and [...] well, some things I don’t understand.
9.
These notes grow day by day, and I have the firm conviction that the movements I predict in your hair aren’t due merely to the storm, there’s a rhythmic premonition and minor swings of reproach that prefigure eventual fractures of the sacrament.
10.
No, the roof won’t give in yet, I promise.
11.
Let it keep raining, and if by chance I close my eyes, Yaddith will have ceased shining in them.
Por si los dioses mueren (1995)
{ Eduardo Mariño, A la salida del fastuoso recital, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2009 }
5.03.2010
El poema / Hanni Ossott
The Poem
Will you be writing tonight?
–Mrs. Carmen asks me
I don’t know if I’ll be writing
I don’t know if the cosmos will come to me
I don't know if the serpent will enclose my body
And spray me with its thirst.
I don’t know.
The night is clear
–after the rain.
And my love is scattered...
I don’t know if the poem will come.
There are lights, yes
cantos
profound cantos
there is the humidity
the rain that rains from within like my tears
from the profound and the depths
it rains, rains.
Edgardo, the ghost
the boyfriend no longer loved, appears
for nothing
like the rain
–now a stranger
–for nothing.
Now indifferent to me
arrives
without interest
to memory.
October, 1991
El circo roto (1996)
{ Hanni Ossott, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2006 }
Will you be writing tonight?
–Mrs. Carmen asks me
I don’t know if I’ll be writing
I don’t know if the cosmos will come to me
I don't know if the serpent will enclose my body
And spray me with its thirst.
I don’t know.
The night is clear
–after the rain.
And my love is scattered...
I don’t know if the poem will come.
There are lights, yes
cantos
profound cantos
there is the humidity
the rain that rains from within like my tears
from the profound and the depths
it rains, rains.
Edgardo, the ghost
the boyfriend no longer loved, appears
for nothing
like the rain
–now a stranger
–for nothing.
Now indifferent to me
arrives
without interest
to memory.
October, 1991
El circo roto (1996)
{ Hanni Ossott, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2006 }
5.02.2010
El talismán / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Talisman
He was living alone in the room garnished by a series of magic mirrors. He was rehearsing, before an interview with an enemy, a fake smile.
He had exterminated the daughters of the poor, abducting and losing them disdainfully. Albrecht Dürer discovered him one night soliciting a heedless girl. The young man had equipped himself with a patrol lantern so as to cowardly scrutinize and he returned to his house after a fruitless round and on a gaunt horse. The artist drew, the next day, the image of the gentleman in the act of returning to his den. He turned him into a riding specter and he substituted his patrol lantern with an hourglass.
The gentleman inhabits a house without guardians, immersed in the shade once the sun sets. No one has mentioned a concerted assault by its ill-wishers.
He abandons himself without anxiety to a defenseless sleep. He entrusts his safety to the effluvium of a phosphorescent flask, where he keeps a human creature, the greatest wonder from Faust’s laboratory.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
He was living alone in the room garnished by a series of magic mirrors. He was rehearsing, before an interview with an enemy, a fake smile.
He had exterminated the daughters of the poor, abducting and losing them disdainfully. Albrecht Dürer discovered him one night soliciting a heedless girl. The young man had equipped himself with a patrol lantern so as to cowardly scrutinize and he returned to his house after a fruitless round and on a gaunt horse. The artist drew, the next day, the image of the gentleman in the act of returning to his den. He turned him into a riding specter and he substituted his patrol lantern with an hourglass.
The gentleman inhabits a house without guardians, immersed in the shade once the sun sets. No one has mentioned a concerted assault by its ill-wishers.
He abandons himself without anxiety to a defenseless sleep. He entrusts his safety to the effluvium of a phosphorescent flask, where he keeps a human creature, the greatest wonder from Faust’s laboratory.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.01.2010
El extranjero / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Foreigner
He had resolved to hide for suffering. He was at leisure in a sepulchral house, asylum of the decadent moss and the senile mushroom. A useless lamp was signifying idleness.
He had renounced the scruples of civilization and considered it an image of softness. He was resting audaciously in the open air, amid prehensile grass.
He was insinuating the image of a primary being, an attempt or delirium of life in a torrential season. His muddy hair and beard seemed altered with the sediment of a lacustrine refuge.
He would dress in flowers and leaves to celebrate the vicissitudes of the sky, culminating ephemeris in the rustic calendar.
He would entertain himself with the thought of returning to the heart of the Earth and losing himself in its darkness. He would prepare for nakedness in the indistinct pit by throwing himself into nature’s fates, receiving in his person the elusive summer rain. He ceased to exist on a day in November, month of the silhouettes.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
He had resolved to hide for suffering. He was at leisure in a sepulchral house, asylum of the decadent moss and the senile mushroom. A useless lamp was signifying idleness.
He had renounced the scruples of civilization and considered it an image of softness. He was resting audaciously in the open air, amid prehensile grass.
He was insinuating the image of a primary being, an attempt or delirium of life in a torrential season. His muddy hair and beard seemed altered with the sediment of a lacustrine refuge.
He would dress in flowers and leaves to celebrate the vicissitudes of the sky, culminating ephemeris in the rustic calendar.
He would entertain himself with the thought of returning to the heart of the Earth and losing himself in its darkness. He would prepare for nakedness in the indistinct pit by throwing himself into nature’s fates, receiving in his person the elusive summer rain. He ceased to exist on a day in November, month of the silhouettes.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
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