El arte es largo / Francisco Pérez Perdomo

Art is Long

Invoking Sisyphus,
Charles Baudelaire affirmed:
“Though my heart is at work
Time is short, Art
is long.” And through
an interposed person,
Wagner, in Goethe’s
Faust, one reads: “Art
is long and our life
short.” This sentence came
from way back and had its
antecedents in Hippocrates,
father of medicine
and famous for his oath
and for his aphorisms.
Art was too long
and our life became
too brief
to reach it. Confined,
I saw all the world’s men
passing through me.
Overcome with terror,
they literally ran
from one side to another
crouching in darkness.
They gave it fleeting
embraces. The singed fury
of their eyes,
leaped from their forge.
The men tried
to reach time,
yet remained so far
from achieving it. A caw
was crossing all the fields
resembling souls in torment.
Behind the trees
a strange lament was hiding.




{ Francisco Pérez Perdomo, Eclipse, Caracas: Edición de autor, 2008 }