The Inlet
In that circle, defended by an amphitheater of mountains and with an opening to a promising sea, the innocence of the primitive world had taken refuge.
The sky would beautify itself with the soft and withered tones of autumn.
The natives were light and frugal and they would idle with the tribute of the holm oaks and the thankful vines.
The vines were dragging their lazy shoots along the ground and on their branches they were reproducing the color of the pearl and the amber, treasures of the neighboring port.
The holm oaks were reposing and lulling the sleep of the august bards, rejuvenated by wine and certain of a blessed longevity. They didn’t dare with the exploits of the young men on the distant sea, full of mobile fish.
The women called themselves sisters of the trees and would adopt the son of the bear and the orphaned cub wolf. They ruled by means of the marvelous gift of sound judgment and foresight.
Those men were persuaded by their inviolable and unending happiness.
Homer had died in their arms.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.25.2011
Cenit / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Zenith
The virgin drives away some long birds, accustomed to frolicking in the mud, attuned, according to size, with the cylinder of aquatic life.
The caravan of candid clouds suffers from thirst in the radiant desert.
The slave draws water from an empty well and refreshes the foot of a pomegranate tree. He takes advantage of a pulley’s ministry, executing equal, mechanical movements.
The mirage oscillates in the sands, naked sheet, by the gleam of a living evaporation.
An oily lake interrupts the bitumen floor.
The virgin remains on the terrace, from where she scattered the lusterless birds. She registers, within a single glance, the circle.
She sings or screams in a venerable language, with firm voice, accustomed to distance.
She feasts the glory of elemental fire.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The virgin drives away some long birds, accustomed to frolicking in the mud, attuned, according to size, with the cylinder of aquatic life.
The caravan of candid clouds suffers from thirst in the radiant desert.
The slave draws water from an empty well and refreshes the foot of a pomegranate tree. He takes advantage of a pulley’s ministry, executing equal, mechanical movements.
The mirage oscillates in the sands, naked sheet, by the gleam of a living evaporation.
An oily lake interrupts the bitumen floor.
The virgin remains on the terrace, from where she scattered the lusterless birds. She registers, within a single glance, the circle.
She sings or screams in a venerable language, with firm voice, accustomed to distance.
She feasts the glory of elemental fire.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.22.2011
Granizada / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Hailstorm
I
– Reading is an act of servility.
– Good is the lesser evil.
– Life is a squandering.
– Life is an affront; the organism is a web of emunctories.
– To live is to die.
– God is cruel to the poor.
– God lacks practical existence.
– God is the relegated and lazy sovereign of a constitutional monarchy, where Satan serves as Prime Minister.
– Truth is the fact.
– Philosophy sets us up in case we insult it.
– Ignorance takes us straight to skepticism, which is the most judicious attitude of our mind.
– Science consists of facts and their explanation. The latter are variable and subject to error, but we shouldn’t worry, because the error is the principal agent of civilization.
– Reputations would impede progress if whisperers didn’t exist.
– The word outstanding applied to students: a tag for sheep, a jewel for the insignificant, noise of the anonymous.
– Law and art are an amendment of reality by man.
– Manners serve to camouflage poor breeding. Urbanity consists of a good mood.
– The cultivation of The Liberator.
– Aristocracy by birth is an autosuggestion. That is why no one believes in the lineage of anyone else.
– Democracy is the aristocracy of ability.
– Illustrious surnames give you free reign.
– Money is only good for buying.
– The bourgeoisie are characterized by the fear of appearing to be bourgeois.
– Schemers tend to display an ostentatious laboriousness.
– Work is a devoted exercise that serves the destitute when they try to win the kingdom of heaven.
– Grammar exists in order to justify illogical actions of language.
– Words are divided into expressive and inexpressive. There are no pure words.
– A language is the universe translated into that language.
– He who uses irreplaceable expressions is a good writer.
– Writers are divided into the boring and the amenable. The first are also called classics.
– People of a classical temperament elevate the case to an example and the example to a rule.
– The only decent thing to do with history is falsify it.
– History is only good for increasing hatred among men.
– We must throw out history, to use with it the gesture of the maid who, on any given morning, dispenses with a broom the corpse of a bat, black, dirty and gloomy critter.
– Conservatives are left-handed.
– Two doctors can’t face each other without laughing.
– It is possible to classify a people according to the interjections they use. The Romans were simpletons; they would animate each other with inexpressive interjections: io, eheu, papae.
– North Americans are alert inventors. They discovered that the purpose of clothing has as its object to dress man, rather than oppress or disguise him. The adoption of the loose neck is another victory of the republic against the ancien régime, a delightful lesson from Benjamin Franklin for the measured courtier of Versailles. That philanthropist wouldn’t rest in the service of his peers after inventing the lightning rod.
– Concubinage deserves the best from the republic. It has accelerated the fusion of the Venezuelan races.
– In Venezuela there isn’t and can’t exist a conflict between the races, because the people of color aspire to be white.
– The family is a school of anthropophagous selfishness.
– Marriage is a zoological state.
– Marriage is the easiest path by which two people are able to hate and scorn each other.
– Marriage: whips and galleys.
– Falling in love is a lack of love for oneself.
– A man marries when he has nothing else to think about.
– Husband and wife: accomplices!
– Humanity is a string of monkeys.
– Men are divided into mental and seminal.
– Women are divided into beautiful and ugly.
– Women are war booty.
– Gideon takes on the task of seducing the woman he marries.
– Gideon loves his wife.
– Clerics abominate woman, agent of heretical nature.
– Ladies are the bailiffs of the dogmatic and chubby bourgeoisie.
– All males should ignore and curse literature. Reading it is a dissipation worthy, at most, of the harem’s deceitful odalisques and perverse eunuchs.
– Dostoevsky preached the religion of suffering. Beware of listening to that anomalous Russian! Let us establish, finally, the religion of human dignity, an intelligible and cheap religion, without clerics or altar.
– Candid people understand that a woman’s love can constitute the prize for a heroic effort or a meritorious life. They don’t notice that an adventurer or an insignificant man would attain the love of that same woman.
– Adultery is a forced crime like contraband. It serves to resolve the tyrannical situations born of the marriage of convenience. It reestablishes sincerity in election.
– Friendship is a capitulation of dignity.
– Lack of scruples is a substitute for energy.
– Fortitude is desperation accepted.
– Language does not allow synonyms, because it is individuating like art. Two words, equivalents in the dictionary, cannot be used one for the other in discourse.
– The British Isles suffer the plague of the snob. Its men of letters have invented, to fight it, a special manner of feeling and expressing themselves, named humour.
– Feminism is a pretense of women to justify what is spent on their rearing.
– It is superfluous to speak ill of people.
– Aristocracy does not exist among the human species.
– Hospitality is a virtue of a barbarous people.
– Men must pay for the privilege of having been born males.
– The proud man compares himself with the ideal of perfection and the vain man compares himself with other men.
– Praise satisfies only abject beings. It is the equivalent of a grace or a license. When we accept it, we confess to the sovereignty of others.
– The word cosmetic summarizes the life and work of Oscar Wilde.
– Woman is the mother of the nation.
– Women are in charge in society’s parties. They invented them when they realized that the male refrains from mistreating them in public. The invention is relatively modern. The ancients did not know such mediocre functions.
– Evil is an author of beauty. Tragedy, the memory of misfortune, is the superior art. Evil introduces surprise, innovation in this routine world. Without evil, we would reach uniformity, we would succumb to idiocy.
– Frivolity is an element of literary beauty. Everything that teaches is ugly.
– The aristocrat needs distinction. The ugliness of the race disturbs in a practical manner the flowering of an aristocracy in Venezuela.
– Certain charity, that of the proud man, is simultaneous with envy. A person curses the prosperity of his equal, censors, at the very least, his fellow in the same line and embraces and gives to the humble man.
– Time is an invention of watchmakers.
– Horace is a golden mediocrity.
– Glory is not aristocratic. It is the verdict of humanity, the agreement of a bunch of parrots.
– Virtue is the sacrifice of oneself. It differs essentially from austerity and from its accomplice ugliness.
– One thing Hamlet forgot: maybe it is necessary to practice evil in order to be respected, to live amidst our fellow beings.
– The English automaton, inveterate imitator, professor of mediocre elegance, formal puppet, supplies the human species with mimicry. Correction is his hypocritical ideal.
– A tongue lacks its own existence. Next to abstract language, general and impersonal, gathered in its straggling lexicons, exists the very singular language of each artist of the word and the language agreed upon by each guild of professors or officials.
– It is very easy to discover defects because every quality is necessarily a characteristic trait, that is, a limit.
– Cowardice, boldness against the destitute, is the essential trait of the human creature.
– Man has invented the symbol because he can’t grasp reality directly.
– God is the primordial law of the Universe. He is, consequently, inflexible.
– Explanation should embrace the phenomenon. A man of judgment gives sparingly to the general rule and proscribes latitudinal, loose causes, capable of explaining too much. Sociology is the monotonous art of negating voluntary progress, citing shapeless causes, of conjectural and equivocal effect.
– Sociology is the Eiffel Tower of stupidity.
– Sacrifice rescues the opprobrium of life.
II
– Uncertainty is the law of the Universe.
– Literature always deserves praise. At the very least it is a derivative; the subject that practices it could always bother us with a more deplorable activity.
– One can conceive of a naturalist morality, founded in the instinct of conservation. This is not a case of an instinct of feral conservation, but rather an instinct of human conservation, converted to the cult of self dignity and to respect for that of the other.
– Shyness has a good tone.
– Society takes advantage of great men less than what it loses with the calamity of their descendants.
– Sociology is a chapter of psychology, because rational beings determine themselves by virtue of reasons.
III
– Groom of German origin, insipid and hypnotic.
IV
– Fame is nothing but the vote of the crowd.
V
– Democracy in the State and aristocracy in the family.
– The greatness of false and influential heroes rises with the whole of others’ merits.
– Agreed upon and orthodox history, catechism of urbanity and correct manners, is cruel to the original and the schismatic, and squanders its palms on the ordinary.
VI
– Freedom is nothing but the fulfillment of the law dictated in favor of the general interest.
I. –Elite; Caracas, 7 September 1929. II. –Elite; Caracas, 10 October 1925. III. –Elite; Caracas, 5 January 1929. (Published under the title Cencerro [Cowbell].) IV. –Elite; Caracas, 24 December 1927. (Published under the title Resumen [Summary].) V. –Elite; Caracas, 7 July 1928. (Published under the title Argumentos [Arguments].) VI. –La Universidad; Caracas, September 1927.
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I
– Reading is an act of servility.
– Good is the lesser evil.
– Life is a squandering.
– Life is an affront; the organism is a web of emunctories.
– To live is to die.
– God is cruel to the poor.
– God lacks practical existence.
– God is the relegated and lazy sovereign of a constitutional monarchy, where Satan serves as Prime Minister.
– Truth is the fact.
– Philosophy sets us up in case we insult it.
– Ignorance takes us straight to skepticism, which is the most judicious attitude of our mind.
– Science consists of facts and their explanation. The latter are variable and subject to error, but we shouldn’t worry, because the error is the principal agent of civilization.
– Reputations would impede progress if whisperers didn’t exist.
– The word outstanding applied to students: a tag for sheep, a jewel for the insignificant, noise of the anonymous.
– Law and art are an amendment of reality by man.
– Manners serve to camouflage poor breeding. Urbanity consists of a good mood.
– The cultivation of The Liberator.
– Aristocracy by birth is an autosuggestion. That is why no one believes in the lineage of anyone else.
– Democracy is the aristocracy of ability.
– Illustrious surnames give you free reign.
– Money is only good for buying.
– The bourgeoisie are characterized by the fear of appearing to be bourgeois.
– Schemers tend to display an ostentatious laboriousness.
– Work is a devoted exercise that serves the destitute when they try to win the kingdom of heaven.
– Grammar exists in order to justify illogical actions of language.
– Words are divided into expressive and inexpressive. There are no pure words.
– A language is the universe translated into that language.
– He who uses irreplaceable expressions is a good writer.
– Writers are divided into the boring and the amenable. The first are also called classics.
– People of a classical temperament elevate the case to an example and the example to a rule.
– The only decent thing to do with history is falsify it.
– History is only good for increasing hatred among men.
– We must throw out history, to use with it the gesture of the maid who, on any given morning, dispenses with a broom the corpse of a bat, black, dirty and gloomy critter.
– Conservatives are left-handed.
– Two doctors can’t face each other without laughing.
– It is possible to classify a people according to the interjections they use. The Romans were simpletons; they would animate each other with inexpressive interjections: io, eheu, papae.
– North Americans are alert inventors. They discovered that the purpose of clothing has as its object to dress man, rather than oppress or disguise him. The adoption of the loose neck is another victory of the republic against the ancien régime, a delightful lesson from Benjamin Franklin for the measured courtier of Versailles. That philanthropist wouldn’t rest in the service of his peers after inventing the lightning rod.
– Concubinage deserves the best from the republic. It has accelerated the fusion of the Venezuelan races.
– In Venezuela there isn’t and can’t exist a conflict between the races, because the people of color aspire to be white.
– The family is a school of anthropophagous selfishness.
– Marriage is a zoological state.
– Marriage is the easiest path by which two people are able to hate and scorn each other.
– Marriage: whips and galleys.
– Falling in love is a lack of love for oneself.
– A man marries when he has nothing else to think about.
– Husband and wife: accomplices!
– Humanity is a string of monkeys.
– Men are divided into mental and seminal.
– Women are divided into beautiful and ugly.
– Women are war booty.
– Gideon takes on the task of seducing the woman he marries.
– Gideon loves his wife.
– Clerics abominate woman, agent of heretical nature.
– Ladies are the bailiffs of the dogmatic and chubby bourgeoisie.
– All males should ignore and curse literature. Reading it is a dissipation worthy, at most, of the harem’s deceitful odalisques and perverse eunuchs.
– Dostoevsky preached the religion of suffering. Beware of listening to that anomalous Russian! Let us establish, finally, the religion of human dignity, an intelligible and cheap religion, without clerics or altar.
– Candid people understand that a woman’s love can constitute the prize for a heroic effort or a meritorious life. They don’t notice that an adventurer or an insignificant man would attain the love of that same woman.
– Adultery is a forced crime like contraband. It serves to resolve the tyrannical situations born of the marriage of convenience. It reestablishes sincerity in election.
– Friendship is a capitulation of dignity.
– Lack of scruples is a substitute for energy.
– Fortitude is desperation accepted.
– Language does not allow synonyms, because it is individuating like art. Two words, equivalents in the dictionary, cannot be used one for the other in discourse.
– The British Isles suffer the plague of the snob. Its men of letters have invented, to fight it, a special manner of feeling and expressing themselves, named humour.
– Feminism is a pretense of women to justify what is spent on their rearing.
– It is superfluous to speak ill of people.
– Aristocracy does not exist among the human species.
– Hospitality is a virtue of a barbarous people.
– Men must pay for the privilege of having been born males.
– The proud man compares himself with the ideal of perfection and the vain man compares himself with other men.
– Praise satisfies only abject beings. It is the equivalent of a grace or a license. When we accept it, we confess to the sovereignty of others.
– The word cosmetic summarizes the life and work of Oscar Wilde.
– Woman is the mother of the nation.
– Women are in charge in society’s parties. They invented them when they realized that the male refrains from mistreating them in public. The invention is relatively modern. The ancients did not know such mediocre functions.
– Evil is an author of beauty. Tragedy, the memory of misfortune, is the superior art. Evil introduces surprise, innovation in this routine world. Without evil, we would reach uniformity, we would succumb to idiocy.
– Frivolity is an element of literary beauty. Everything that teaches is ugly.
– The aristocrat needs distinction. The ugliness of the race disturbs in a practical manner the flowering of an aristocracy in Venezuela.
– Certain charity, that of the proud man, is simultaneous with envy. A person curses the prosperity of his equal, censors, at the very least, his fellow in the same line and embraces and gives to the humble man.
– Time is an invention of watchmakers.
– Horace is a golden mediocrity.
– Glory is not aristocratic. It is the verdict of humanity, the agreement of a bunch of parrots.
– Virtue is the sacrifice of oneself. It differs essentially from austerity and from its accomplice ugliness.
– One thing Hamlet forgot: maybe it is necessary to practice evil in order to be respected, to live amidst our fellow beings.
– The English automaton, inveterate imitator, professor of mediocre elegance, formal puppet, supplies the human species with mimicry. Correction is his hypocritical ideal.
– A tongue lacks its own existence. Next to abstract language, general and impersonal, gathered in its straggling lexicons, exists the very singular language of each artist of the word and the language agreed upon by each guild of professors or officials.
– It is very easy to discover defects because every quality is necessarily a characteristic trait, that is, a limit.
– Cowardice, boldness against the destitute, is the essential trait of the human creature.
– Man has invented the symbol because he can’t grasp reality directly.
– God is the primordial law of the Universe. He is, consequently, inflexible.
– Explanation should embrace the phenomenon. A man of judgment gives sparingly to the general rule and proscribes latitudinal, loose causes, capable of explaining too much. Sociology is the monotonous art of negating voluntary progress, citing shapeless causes, of conjectural and equivocal effect.
– Sociology is the Eiffel Tower of stupidity.
– Sacrifice rescues the opprobrium of life.
II
– Uncertainty is the law of the Universe.
– Literature always deserves praise. At the very least it is a derivative; the subject that practices it could always bother us with a more deplorable activity.
– One can conceive of a naturalist morality, founded in the instinct of conservation. This is not a case of an instinct of feral conservation, but rather an instinct of human conservation, converted to the cult of self dignity and to respect for that of the other.
– Shyness has a good tone.
– Society takes advantage of great men less than what it loses with the calamity of their descendants.
– Sociology is a chapter of psychology, because rational beings determine themselves by virtue of reasons.
III
– Groom of German origin, insipid and hypnotic.
IV
– Fame is nothing but the vote of the crowd.
V
– Democracy in the State and aristocracy in the family.
– The greatness of false and influential heroes rises with the whole of others’ merits.
– Agreed upon and orthodox history, catechism of urbanity and correct manners, is cruel to the original and the schismatic, and squanders its palms on the ordinary.
VI
– Freedom is nothing but the fulfillment of the law dictated in favor of the general interest.
I. –Elite; Caracas, 7 September 1929. II. –Elite; Caracas, 10 October 1925. III. –Elite; Caracas, 5 January 1929. (Published under the title Cencerro [Cowbell].) IV. –Elite; Caracas, 24 December 1927. (Published under the title Resumen [Summary].) V. –Elite; Caracas, 7 July 1928. (Published under the title Argumentos [Arguments].) VI. –La Universidad; Caracas, September 1927.
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.21.2011
Rúnica / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Runic
The immoderate king was born of the love between his mother and the sea monster. His voice stops, near the beach, an orca nourished by the tribute of a hundred maidens.
He abandons himself, at night, to the frenzy of intoxication and his loyalists play at wounding themselves with sharpened swords, with the dart used for hunting wild boars, that hangs from the belts of the epic statues.
The incontinent king becomes impassioned with a girl accustomed to the severity of poverty and hidden in her stone cabin. She would adorn herself with flowers from the rough-maned thicket.
The girl is associated to the orgiastic life. A courtier adds an accusation to his habitual mirth. The king interrupts the feast and condemns her to die under the tumult of some black horses.
The victim sleeps under the damp moss.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The immoderate king was born of the love between his mother and the sea monster. His voice stops, near the beach, an orca nourished by the tribute of a hundred maidens.
He abandons himself, at night, to the frenzy of intoxication and his loyalists play at wounding themselves with sharpened swords, with the dart used for hunting wild boars, that hangs from the belts of the epic statues.
The incontinent king becomes impassioned with a girl accustomed to the severity of poverty and hidden in her stone cabin. She would adorn herself with flowers from the rough-maned thicket.
The girl is associated to the orgiastic life. A courtier adds an accusation to his habitual mirth. The king interrupts the feast and condemns her to die under the tumult of some black horses.
The victim sleeps under the damp moss.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.20.2011
El bienaventurado / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Blessed One
Some magic lights were gamboling on the sea’s motionless waters. The cabins on the shore, scarcity and ruin, were alternately surging and foundering in the shadows.
The natives were interrupting my sleep proclaiming nakedness and the cold. I would retire from their tears to the asperity of some eremitical hills and would return late to their vicinity.
I lived attentive to the release of pain. The deaconess with an innocent glance and angelic voice had pointed out for me that means of gathering merits, of growing in health and wisdom.
I received the message of grace in her canticle with a grey accent. The psalm of exile and of anguish would rise from the cell to the windows of my room, in the uncultivated country.
A childlike pity, a grace from my visit to the dispossessed, and the lamentations of nostalgia at the same hour of the day easily converted me to the habit of sacrifice. Within view of a resplendent sunset’s glow, I suffered from the memory of the path of the Via Crucis.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Some magic lights were gamboling on the sea’s motionless waters. The cabins on the shore, scarcity and ruin, were alternately surging and foundering in the shadows.
The natives were interrupting my sleep proclaiming nakedness and the cold. I would retire from their tears to the asperity of some eremitical hills and would return late to their vicinity.
I lived attentive to the release of pain. The deaconess with an innocent glance and angelic voice had pointed out for me that means of gathering merits, of growing in health and wisdom.
I received the message of grace in her canticle with a grey accent. The psalm of exile and of anguish would rise from the cell to the windows of my room, in the uncultivated country.
A childlike pity, a grace from my visit to the dispossessed, and the lamentations of nostalgia at the same hour of the day easily converted me to the habit of sacrifice. Within view of a resplendent sunset’s glow, I suffered from the memory of the path of the Via Crucis.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.18.2011
Un gran sueño / Ramón Palomares
A Great Dream
a)
My wife has been those savage
distances
whose doors are extermination;
the birds I loved sang right here
and the girl I loved died, amid burning valleys;
I played at being young
here
where no friendship for past centuries existed.
b)
Toward the turbulent stars my country explodes
and chases its own happy gifts
at the intersection of heroes.
And it is assassinated at the places of its flag
like a man in a strange place
–looking for a coin, looking for a sweet coin
rolling through the multitudes.
c)
If he has spoken
we have lost his words.
And if he had laughed or cried
we would have lost his laugh or his wail.
After all we sustain an august funereal chamber
exposed to laughter and weeping.
Honras fúnebres (1965)
{ Ramón Palomares, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
a)
My wife has been those savage
distances
whose doors are extermination;
the birds I loved sang right here
and the girl I loved died, amid burning valleys;
I played at being young
here
where no friendship for past centuries existed.
b)
Toward the turbulent stars my country explodes
and chases its own happy gifts
at the intersection of heroes.
And it is assassinated at the places of its flag
like a man in a strange place
–looking for a coin, looking for a sweet coin
rolling through the multitudes.
c)
If he has spoken
we have lost his words.
And if he had laughed or cried
we would have lost his laugh or his wail.
After all we sustain an august funereal chamber
exposed to laughter and weeping.
Honras fúnebres (1965)
{ Ramón Palomares, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
1.17.2011
En las cámaras fúnebres / Ramón Palomares
In the Funereal Chambers
a)
All the hills I roamed
are bloody
and all the beds I slept in belonged to love.
I watch the horses go by
without a rider; without hands to sustain their reins;
they lie in the field
under buzzing flies, amid moans and the smell of recent wounds.
The swords laugh
and the rifles sound incited by the flags and the sky I love!
b)
“Riding a horse just like shaken fire
my heart rotated
pushing me
and my powers knew how to speak to the sword
here and there
amid the stuck lances,
not to mention the loves, hates or beliefs
of those from overseas.
I listen to my horse’s laugh and the curse of the sky
as though they were the conversations of elders!
c)
Masses
these are my weapons
and the blood and the drunken men in the massacre.
My love is a country
I tossed into the future
like a branch of violence.
It satisfied me to see it
in the west
with golden eyes.
Honras fúnebres (1965)
{ Ramón Palomares, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
a)
All the hills I roamed
are bloody
and all the beds I slept in belonged to love.
I watch the horses go by
without a rider; without hands to sustain their reins;
they lie in the field
under buzzing flies, amid moans and the smell of recent wounds.
The swords laugh
and the rifles sound incited by the flags and the sky I love!
b)
“Riding a horse just like shaken fire
my heart rotated
pushing me
and my powers knew how to speak to the sword
here and there
amid the stuck lances,
not to mention the loves, hates or beliefs
of those from overseas.
I listen to my horse’s laugh and the curse of the sky
as though they were the conversations of elders!
c)
Masses
these are my weapons
and the blood and the drunken men in the massacre.
My love is a country
I tossed into the future
like a branch of violence.
It satisfied me to see it
in the west
with golden eyes.
Honras fúnebres (1965)
{ Ramón Palomares, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
1.15.2011
Baile / Ramón Palomares
Dance
I have broken the sun
I am a card that shines
my stars are by the cliff.
I was over there laughing, once
and my hair hung down my shoulders and I sang
and everyone stood still and remained
enchanted.
She has come over the hilltops wrapped in fire;
her mouth’s complaint flies
and her songs fly and so do her alluring lips that explode
into night irises;
from midnight to three, from midnight to three
fatal
at dawn.
When the musician tightens the cuatro strings
and feet rotate
and the living room burns.
I won’t stop returning
I will illuminate the windows
I will tangle the mare’s mane.
I won’t stop returning.
I won’t stop returning.
Paisano (1964)
{ Ramón Palomares, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
I have broken the sun
I am a card that shines
my stars are by the cliff.
I was over there laughing, once
and my hair hung down my shoulders and I sang
and everyone stood still and remained
enchanted.
She has come over the hilltops wrapped in fire;
her mouth’s complaint flies
and her songs fly and so do her alluring lips that explode
into night irises;
from midnight to three, from midnight to three
fatal
at dawn.
When the musician tightens the cuatro strings
and feet rotate
and the living room burns.
I won’t stop returning
I will illuminate the windows
I will tangle the mare’s mane.
I won’t stop returning.
I won’t stop returning.
Paisano (1964)
{ Ramón Palomares, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
1.14.2011
Páramo / Ramón Palomares
Plateau
Fog passed through the peaks,
cloaked with its night,
no bird is seen in the mountains,
no light.
–Sing about why you’re so alone
why you cry,
why’d you join our sadness.
Little mountain string, seven-colored bird,
who’re you singing to,
who’re you telling I love you.
There’s the girl with the big dress,
all she does is cry,
all she does is drink from the mountain.
They tossed holy water
and the wood pigeons died and left
everything covered in feathers.
Oh,
when you’re singing
everything moves, everything turns
to where you sing.
I’ll call you dove, I’ll call you honey,
I’ll say little river stone.
Little mountain string, seven-colored bird:
who’re you telling I love you.
Paisano (1964)
{ Ramón Palomares, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
Fog passed through the peaks,
cloaked with its night,
no bird is seen in the mountains,
no light.
–Sing about why you’re so alone
why you cry,
why’d you join our sadness.
Little mountain string, seven-colored bird,
who’re you singing to,
who’re you telling I love you.
There’s the girl with the big dress,
all she does is cry,
all she does is drink from the mountain.
They tossed holy water
and the wood pigeons died and left
everything covered in feathers.
Oh,
when you’re singing
everything moves, everything turns
to where you sing.
I’ll call you dove, I’ll call you honey,
I’ll say little river stone.
Little mountain string, seven-colored bird:
who’re you telling I love you.
Paisano (1964)
{ Ramón Palomares, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
1.12.2011
La vigilia del campamento / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Camp Vigil
The king, ancient skeleton, was proud to be soldier. He had entrusted me with the task of spying on the scoundrels of his dealing and friendship, incorporated to the ultramarine expedition. The king himself had presided the viewing of naval forces and was stepping on enemy territory, with an invader’s pretensions.
I remember the ill dream of the hosts in the night of volatile phantoms. The soldiers required armament to defend themselves from an illusory assault. I ended up in a swamp as I was chasing a false horseman. He was able to disentangle himself from my hands by means of luck and original prestige. A scar obliquely divided his diabolical face of an earless cat; by which I was to think of the figure of a warrior for Attila. I frightened from the water’s surface a few frogs raised in the mud, inhibited and frightened by the sentinel’s anxious voice. They were displaying a necklace of pearls on green livery.
The criminal subjects, pointed out by my censure, disappeared seduced by unfaithful visions and engaged with the adversary’s field, where they suffered the luck of spies and mixers. Greed had separated them far from exile.
The happiest and most impious one was lost in an extravagant battle. His quick rival was able to fatigue him with unexpected blows from Hamlet’s floret.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The king, ancient skeleton, was proud to be soldier. He had entrusted me with the task of spying on the scoundrels of his dealing and friendship, incorporated to the ultramarine expedition. The king himself had presided the viewing of naval forces and was stepping on enemy territory, with an invader’s pretensions.
I remember the ill dream of the hosts in the night of volatile phantoms. The soldiers required armament to defend themselves from an illusory assault. I ended up in a swamp as I was chasing a false horseman. He was able to disentangle himself from my hands by means of luck and original prestige. A scar obliquely divided his diabolical face of an earless cat; by which I was to think of the figure of a warrior for Attila. I frightened from the water’s surface a few frogs raised in the mud, inhibited and frightened by the sentinel’s anxious voice. They were displaying a necklace of pearls on green livery.
The criminal subjects, pointed out by my censure, disappeared seduced by unfaithful visions and engaged with the adversary’s field, where they suffered the luck of spies and mixers. Greed had separated them far from exile.
The happiest and most impious one was lost in an extravagant battle. His quick rival was able to fatigue him with unexpected blows from Hamlet’s floret.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.10.2011
Hesperia / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Hesperia
The priest refers to prehistoric events. He describes a continent ruled by initiated monarchs, with venerable pretensions and sumptuous tiaras, and how they provoked the cataclysm where they were lost, in rebellion against the invulnerable numens.
The priest confessed himself an heir of the melancholy wisdom and treasured by him and those of his lineage.
He was inferring blows from the faces of frenetic panthers. He was facing the authority of the lions and tarnishing their crown. He was glimpsing, from his observatory, the sky sparkling by means of a steel mechanism.
He busied himself facilitating my return trip. His galley with twenty oars per side was crossing, to the sound of a fife, the green waved gulf.
I returned to the heart of my people to celebrate with them the ceremony of an enduring separation.
The morning’s beauty was sharpening the feeling of departure.
I had to follow the advice of the priest interested in my happiness, forever, in the peninsula of the assiduous spring.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The priest refers to prehistoric events. He describes a continent ruled by initiated monarchs, with venerable pretensions and sumptuous tiaras, and how they provoked the cataclysm where they were lost, in rebellion against the invulnerable numens.
The priest confessed himself an heir of the melancholy wisdom and treasured by him and those of his lineage.
He was inferring blows from the faces of frenetic panthers. He was facing the authority of the lions and tarnishing their crown. He was glimpsing, from his observatory, the sky sparkling by means of a steel mechanism.
He busied himself facilitating my return trip. His galley with twenty oars per side was crossing, to the sound of a fife, the green waved gulf.
I returned to the heart of my people to celebrate with them the ceremony of an enduring separation.
The morning’s beauty was sharpening the feeling of departure.
I had to follow the advice of the priest interested in my happiness, forever, in the peninsula of the assiduous spring.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.09.2011
El desvarío de Calipso / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Calipso’s Delirium
Ulysses, reclined on the sand dune, sets his gaze on the solitary sea. He lives consumed by nostalgia and cultivates pious feelings and a severe memory.
The nymph, dressed in her hair, calls him voices from the foot of the shining holm oak.
Ulysses, demolisher of cities, watches the vertigo of the clouds and thinks of fire’s delirious smoke, bonfire of decrepit kingdoms, and in the veracity of his epic nickname. The sun once more exercises its authority of titan conqueror of chaos.
Ulysses is missing his hatchet, of instantaneous cut, required for a pine section and a skiff’s adornment.
Swimming he reaches a floating log, wounded by a ray in the sky, and travels according to the course of a current visible amid the confused waves.
An escort of tritons, of libertine visage, blows, stirred up, its seashell acoustic pavilion.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Ulysses, reclined on the sand dune, sets his gaze on the solitary sea. He lives consumed by nostalgia and cultivates pious feelings and a severe memory.
The nymph, dressed in her hair, calls him voices from the foot of the shining holm oak.
Ulysses, demolisher of cities, watches the vertigo of the clouds and thinks of fire’s delirious smoke, bonfire of decrepit kingdoms, and in the veracity of his epic nickname. The sun once more exercises its authority of titan conqueror of chaos.
Ulysses is missing his hatchet, of instantaneous cut, required for a pine section and a skiff’s adornment.
Swimming he reaches a floating log, wounded by a ray in the sky, and travels according to the course of a current visible amid the confused waves.
An escort of tritons, of libertine visage, blows, stirred up, its seashell acoustic pavilion.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.08.2011
La casta de los centauros / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Lineage of the Centaurs
The provincial woman, of grave and novice youth, refers to the adventures and dangers of the plains, where she was born and raised. The black hair accentuates the pale face and demands a crown of narcotic flowers.
She evokes, dressed in white, the image of a torrid climate and the refreshment of its palm trees. Her hand has posed on a sphinx’s forehead and has registered venerable parchments in the asylum of a sanctuary, beneath the sparkle of an alabaster lamp.
Her voice has sung a nostalgic aria in which a deleterious river merges with the sea, and some bluebirds chirp without relief or refuge on the willow banks.
The maiden requires an imaginary scene. The favored one speaks in the patio of songs and musical parties, beside a fountain guarded by the bronze effigies of insurgent lions, and insists upon the treasures guarded by griffins, beyond the asperity of the sand dunes, where the centennial hermits live and grieve; and an Ethiopian slave girl interrupts the story to celebrate the delicious air, filled with the scent of myrtles.
The maiden refers to the fate of the plains, the events of her horsemanship by the glow of an interminable twilight. Her figure, on the horse with resolute gallop, should be carved into the pediment of a gentilitious temple.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The provincial woman, of grave and novice youth, refers to the adventures and dangers of the plains, where she was born and raised. The black hair accentuates the pale face and demands a crown of narcotic flowers.
She evokes, dressed in white, the image of a torrid climate and the refreshment of its palm trees. Her hand has posed on a sphinx’s forehead and has registered venerable parchments in the asylum of a sanctuary, beneath the sparkle of an alabaster lamp.
Her voice has sung a nostalgic aria in which a deleterious river merges with the sea, and some bluebirds chirp without relief or refuge on the willow banks.
The maiden requires an imaginary scene. The favored one speaks in the patio of songs and musical parties, beside a fountain guarded by the bronze effigies of insurgent lions, and insists upon the treasures guarded by griffins, beyond the asperity of the sand dunes, where the centennial hermits live and grieve; and an Ethiopian slave girl interrupts the story to celebrate the delicious air, filled with the scent of myrtles.
The maiden refers to the fate of the plains, the events of her horsemanship by the glow of an interminable twilight. Her figure, on the horse with resolute gallop, should be carved into the pediment of a gentilitious temple.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.06.2011
Apocalipsis / Hesnor Rivera
Apocalypse
My country ruminates in secret
the water of disasters.
It rests its teeth from the wings and ruminates
–teeth that bleed
much more
than a shipwreck’s oars.
Much more than the youths beneath the stormy
August sky.
Only the lips of the eye whistle like the serpent
arrows with letters of vengeance.
Red ballads crossing the night
like errant stars.
What does the master demand? melancholic children scream
in the nights of clay. It is spelled M
before B and P as in the word Constantinople.
When one is born beside an immense lake
like the leguminous chest of the servants.
When one grows beside the chest of the water
around which
the world rotates
divided into its parts:
you tell me alligator tail
in love with the garden of petroleum’s
gelatinously blind lightning.
You tell me wolf extinguished like a lamp
by the thirst of a hairy worm of the seas.
You tell me
oh! brooding virgins
of tragic hawks.
Tell me, aren’t we born and grown for the world
and yet we sprawl like a domestic rooster
on the shores of conquest?
Aren’t we born and grown like the world
that divides into blood
of conquerors
and sores that open
like the ears of humiliating sadness?
My country ruminates in secret the water of disasters
What does the master demand? melancholic children scream
in the nights of clay.
It is spelled M
before B and P
as in the word Constantinople.
A distant ship hangs between the trunks
of the palms
like a hammock
of a monstrous king.
On the tar paving-stones
of the ports the parents are dying.
They fold themselves over the
exportable boxes of the heat
consumed by countries
intoxicated with fires.
Only at noon arrives the tribe
of the blood faces –seeking their ancient age
of gold among the rats killed by the gust
of carbide horns that ripens the plaintains.
It might be that on water
the inferno
truly begins.
The high martyrdoms
truly begin.
It might be that in the brilliant docks
of the bonfires
a man could aspire
to nourish
the insects of the forest.
A man could attempt to strangle with sex
the green fires that swell
like the seed of beasts
whose gale interior protects
the large dicotyledonous wings of the tropics.
What does the master demand? melancholic children
scream in the nights of clay.
Beneath its crazy lobster ceiling sun
the city
also hears
its own birth.
Around the coconut groves it was growing
and circling like a little donkey.
Around the temple of the thieves it was growing.
Around the fire of the swamps.
It was growing around the desolate miners
inside their skeletons
with orbits of agonizing lanterns.
The city was growing –it always grows
around the golden victims.
Of the dead that surround their memories
with oral violets. It only grows around
the excavations
where the dead
tend to hide forever.
My country ruminates in secret
the water of disasters.
Under that sun with black skin an island
builds itself alone at dawn.
From the heights of the jungle
rivers of purple oranges depart.
Dead avalanches of pewter animals depart.
The cattail
with its slimy
centipede feet.
So then an island is not a nest
of blessed
corals.
It is not an open door to the moon
that drives with sinister threads
the lightning’s cruelty from all the skies.
An island is the obscure
center
of the zone under surveillance.
Plump spadices sustain
the luminous eggs
of a somber fauna.
And finally a meaningless story
ends up denouncing the wake
of the always ancient woman
by which the gramineous shack could participate in the party.
What does the master demand? melancholic children
scream in the nights of clay.
It is spelled M before B and P
as in the word Constantinople.
Maracaibo, 1952.
{ Hesnor Rivera, El Salmón: Revista de Poesía, Apocalipsis: Año III – No 7, Caracas: January-April 2010 }
My country ruminates in secret
the water of disasters.
It rests its teeth from the wings and ruminates
–teeth that bleed
much more
than a shipwreck’s oars.
Much more than the youths beneath the stormy
August sky.
Only the lips of the eye whistle like the serpent
arrows with letters of vengeance.
Red ballads crossing the night
like errant stars.
What does the master demand? melancholic children scream
in the nights of clay. It is spelled M
before B and P as in the word Constantinople.
When one is born beside an immense lake
like the leguminous chest of the servants.
When one grows beside the chest of the water
around which
the world rotates
divided into its parts:
you tell me alligator tail
in love with the garden of petroleum’s
gelatinously blind lightning.
You tell me wolf extinguished like a lamp
by the thirst of a hairy worm of the seas.
You tell me
oh! brooding virgins
of tragic hawks.
Tell me, aren’t we born and grown for the world
and yet we sprawl like a domestic rooster
on the shores of conquest?
Aren’t we born and grown like the world
that divides into blood
of conquerors
and sores that open
like the ears of humiliating sadness?
My country ruminates in secret the water of disasters
What does the master demand? melancholic children scream
in the nights of clay.
It is spelled M
before B and P
as in the word Constantinople.
A distant ship hangs between the trunks
of the palms
like a hammock
of a monstrous king.
On the tar paving-stones
of the ports the parents are dying.
They fold themselves over the
exportable boxes of the heat
consumed by countries
intoxicated with fires.
Only at noon arrives the tribe
of the blood faces –seeking their ancient age
of gold among the rats killed by the gust
of carbide horns that ripens the plaintains.
It might be that on water
the inferno
truly begins.
The high martyrdoms
truly begin.
It might be that in the brilliant docks
of the bonfires
a man could aspire
to nourish
the insects of the forest.
A man could attempt to strangle with sex
the green fires that swell
like the seed of beasts
whose gale interior protects
the large dicotyledonous wings of the tropics.
What does the master demand? melancholic children
scream in the nights of clay.
Beneath its crazy lobster ceiling sun
the city
also hears
its own birth.
Around the coconut groves it was growing
and circling like a little donkey.
Around the temple of the thieves it was growing.
Around the fire of the swamps.
It was growing around the desolate miners
inside their skeletons
with orbits of agonizing lanterns.
The city was growing –it always grows
around the golden victims.
Of the dead that surround their memories
with oral violets. It only grows around
the excavations
where the dead
tend to hide forever.
My country ruminates in secret
the water of disasters.
Under that sun with black skin an island
builds itself alone at dawn.
From the heights of the jungle
rivers of purple oranges depart.
Dead avalanches of pewter animals depart.
The cattail
with its slimy
centipede feet.
So then an island is not a nest
of blessed
corals.
It is not an open door to the moon
that drives with sinister threads
the lightning’s cruelty from all the skies.
An island is the obscure
center
of the zone under surveillance.
Plump spadices sustain
the luminous eggs
of a somber fauna.
And finally a meaningless story
ends up denouncing the wake
of the always ancient woman
by which the gramineous shack could participate in the party.
What does the master demand? melancholic children
scream in the nights of clay.
It is spelled M before B and P
as in the word Constantinople.
Maracaibo, 1952.
{ Hesnor Rivera, El Salmón: Revista de Poesía, Apocalipsis: Año III – No 7, Caracas: January-April 2010 }
1.05.2011
La deriva / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Drifting
I was distinguishing, from the galley, the seven chambered mausoleum, dedicated to a legendary dynasty and built on a break in a mountain. The sailors were secretly talking about the pulverized remains and pointing out the vestiges of disappeared towns on certain steps along the shore.
The horizontal sun was penetrating the windows of a hulk, in the form of a pyramid, divided into gradual plateaus. Beneath the galley ran a sudden spasm of the waters. We attributed it to the irruption of a burst whose origin we ignored.
A corpulent fish was threatening us at a short distance, abandoned to the mercy of the waves. We were designating it with the name of a marine beast, mentioned in a prophet’s delirium.
One of our own, accustomed to the navigation of a lazy river and to the fire of a torrid climate, was intermittently blowing his bronze horn.
Not a single human creature was seen on the arid cliffs.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I was distinguishing, from the galley, the seven chambered mausoleum, dedicated to a legendary dynasty and built on a break in a mountain. The sailors were secretly talking about the pulverized remains and pointing out the vestiges of disappeared towns on certain steps along the shore.
The horizontal sun was penetrating the windows of a hulk, in the form of a pyramid, divided into gradual plateaus. Beneath the galley ran a sudden spasm of the waters. We attributed it to the irruption of a burst whose origin we ignored.
A corpulent fish was threatening us at a short distance, abandoned to the mercy of the waves. We were designating it with the name of a marine beast, mentioned in a prophet’s delirium.
One of our own, accustomed to the navigation of a lazy river and to the fire of a torrid climate, was intermittently blowing his bronze horn.
Not a single human creature was seen on the arid cliffs.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.03.2011
El sagitario / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Sagittarian
I climbed the black marble staircase soliciting my arrow, imprudently shot. I found it stuck in the door made of cedar, embellished with symmetrical drawings.
I was accustomed to shooting with the silver bow, similar to Apollo’s, for the sake of interrogating fortune. I was about to leave in vessel with square sails though I only trusted those with triangular sails. I had grown up satisfying my whims and caprices.
A woman emerged behind my back, she moved resolutely to pull out the arrow and took it away from me without speaking a word. Her presence had prevented the success of my shot. I recognized one of the enemies of Orpheus.
I was left captivated by that imperious woman, dressed in a panther’s skin. I thought I had seen her at the head of a procession enraged with the offerings presented at the mausoleum for Eurydice’s lover. Her angry gesture had been out of place in the overflowing night.
I once again defended the master’s ashes and frightened off the mob of bitter women, simulating, from a grove, savage roars. I was expecting to suffer from one moment to the next the revenge of that artifice.
The woman climbed onto the ship with me and despotically called to her service the sea demons, hidden in the reefs. The sailors came to an understanding with their glances and chose a new course. The sun traced the arc of its route on the circuit of the waters several times. An unknown bird was flying ahead of us.
I was abandoned to my own resources on a muddy shore, from where one could see, at a brief distance, a monument consecrated to the furies.
I discovered the name of the place recalling a lamentation by Orestes.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I climbed the black marble staircase soliciting my arrow, imprudently shot. I found it stuck in the door made of cedar, embellished with symmetrical drawings.
I was accustomed to shooting with the silver bow, similar to Apollo’s, for the sake of interrogating fortune. I was about to leave in vessel with square sails though I only trusted those with triangular sails. I had grown up satisfying my whims and caprices.
A woman emerged behind my back, she moved resolutely to pull out the arrow and took it away from me without speaking a word. Her presence had prevented the success of my shot. I recognized one of the enemies of Orpheus.
I was left captivated by that imperious woman, dressed in a panther’s skin. I thought I had seen her at the head of a procession enraged with the offerings presented at the mausoleum for Eurydice’s lover. Her angry gesture had been out of place in the overflowing night.
I once again defended the master’s ashes and frightened off the mob of bitter women, simulating, from a grove, savage roars. I was expecting to suffer from one moment to the next the revenge of that artifice.
The woman climbed onto the ship with me and despotically called to her service the sea demons, hidden in the reefs. The sailors came to an understanding with their glances and chose a new course. The sun traced the arc of its route on the circuit of the waters several times. An unknown bird was flying ahead of us.
I was abandoned to my own resources on a muddy shore, from where one could see, at a brief distance, a monument consecrated to the furies.
I discovered the name of the place recalling a lamentation by Orestes.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
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