The Sons of the Earth
The nomads, reduced to indigence, had fixed their field tent amid a plain corroded by fire. The horses, practical in the art of finding grass under the snow, were biting and crushing the blackened straw. They had been released from a few innoble carts. A fortuitous dust storm was coming in from the horizon to waste the efforts of the blacksmiths and the veterinarian surgeons, trades vindicated to satisfy the questions from the police.
The natives of the country, faithful to a tyrannical dogma, were guarding the pilgrim’s actions and accusing them of being impious and rapacious. I would not venture into their camp save on horseback and armed with a curved sword and after fitting myself down to my ears with a cylindrical cap, made of sheep’s hair.
The nomads claimed to be offended in their rudimental credo and were soliciting the help of some obtuse divinities, phantoms of the desolate chaos. They referred the origin of their race to the invasion of a comet, at the beginning of the centuries.
They decided to move on during the last oscillations of autumn. The crystals of the precocious snow were starting to fly. The gusts of wind from the pole were dissolving an unburied virgin’s shroud, in the stygian night, at the edge of the world.
They damaged, before their journey, the faith of the indigenous people with the sacrifice of a dog in the manner of the crucifix. In that way, they consulted the success of their thoughts and required immediate arrival and succor from the night. They invited it to mercilessly fustigate the pair of crows of their taciturn cart.
The famished host headed towards the encounter with a precipitated sun.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
8.07.2012
El ciego infalible / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Infallible Blind Man
The indifferent page proclaims from a raft the countryside cereals. He negotiates the narrowness and vortex of the sedentary river. A rice paper hat defends his smooth, sculptural person.
An old man with empty eyes executes a desolate music on his bamboo shepherd’s flute. He lives off alms at the entrance of my lacquer and porcelain trinkets store. At one point he refers to his captivity in the hideout of some highway robbers embittered by his sight, distrustful of his practice of the terrain.
I exercise the even business of a shopkeeper in a withered city. I attain no amusement save the death of a beggar on the street and the cremation of his cadaver amidst a racket of scamps or otherwise the torture of a parricide sagaciously crushed and quartered by the executioner.
The page owes me his rearing. I saved him from succumbing amid some ruins, during a war with the pirates of Europe. The invader’s arms devastated the marble bridge of a metropolis and printed the dye of charcoal and soot on the effigies of some decorative lions. I discovered the infant in a wicker basket, abandoned by his servers in an orchard of camellias and hydrangeas. The smoke from the battle was offending the lofty wisteria, of aerial garland, with a blue flower.
The old man with the empty eyes encourages my hope in the effects of good and promises me fortune’s grace. He ignores my diligence in defending a privileged child.
I have followed the conduct of a fisherman in an honest episode and I imagine the visit of a princess with an ivory semblance, afflicted by the loss of a son. Her faculties should rescue me from penury.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The indifferent page proclaims from a raft the countryside cereals. He negotiates the narrowness and vortex of the sedentary river. A rice paper hat defends his smooth, sculptural person.
An old man with empty eyes executes a desolate music on his bamboo shepherd’s flute. He lives off alms at the entrance of my lacquer and porcelain trinkets store. At one point he refers to his captivity in the hideout of some highway robbers embittered by his sight, distrustful of his practice of the terrain.
I exercise the even business of a shopkeeper in a withered city. I attain no amusement save the death of a beggar on the street and the cremation of his cadaver amidst a racket of scamps or otherwise the torture of a parricide sagaciously crushed and quartered by the executioner.
The page owes me his rearing. I saved him from succumbing amid some ruins, during a war with the pirates of Europe. The invader’s arms devastated the marble bridge of a metropolis and printed the dye of charcoal and soot on the effigies of some decorative lions. I discovered the infant in a wicker basket, abandoned by his servers in an orchard of camellias and hydrangeas. The smoke from the battle was offending the lofty wisteria, of aerial garland, with a blue flower.
The old man with the empty eyes encourages my hope in the effects of good and promises me fortune’s grace. He ignores my diligence in defending a privileged child.
I have followed the conduct of a fisherman in an honest episode and I imagine the visit of a princess with an ivory semblance, afflicted by the loss of a son. Her faculties should rescue me from penury.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
7.25.2012
Ese es mi nombre / Francisco Pérez Perdomo
That’s My Name
Francisco they call me,
that’s my grace
and I am from these places,
I was born in this land
called land of clouds
one day the sixteenth of September
of nineteen thirty, amid
the trees, the forests and a wind
that often emerged
from giant vessels
and would move in circles
through the nearby plaza.
I came into the world
escorted by luminous insects,
squirrels and lizards.
A few days after my birth
some owls and serpents
kidnapped me
and hid me in a corner of the fields.
In that lapse my parents didn’t see me.
When after a short while
my kidnappers released me,
I crossed the highlands
reclining on my mother’s skirt
while she rode on horseback
a skinny and chestnut mare.
That’s how I arrived at a neighboring village.
One could say the birds abducted me
and lay me down in a new district.
My feet grew
over mountains and cliffs, tangled
in thin and ragged
weeds and a spectral
vegetation that would moan day and night
climbing up stone walls.
From time to time a very sad
ditch would bind my legs,
throw me down onto thickets
and then lull me like a sibyl.
Little by little my body grew longer
in the plateaus behind those
kites that would write in the sphere
indecipherable celestial signs
and to whose tails I would cling.
For a long time the kites were
my umbilical chord.
One day, one day their strings dragged me
in a frenzied race
over the biggest plateau.
Then I was elevated, I moved further
from the earth, and repeatedly turning
my eyes to look back,
I would watch it not without a certain start,
bewitched I would fly above the distances.
Without realizing it I became,
almost insensibly, a remote point
barely discernible in the spaces.
Many years of an adventurous and avid existence
passed in this manner.
With utmost happiness
and robed with the sky’s layers
I would have spent my entire life there
deciphering that writing
and making signs at the world
with a white lamp
at times very agitated in my hands.
I ran about the moon.
The whistle of the stars
was the magic flute that retained me
in such high places.
In my familiarity with the stars
the noises of the ground didn’t lacerate my ears.
I spoke aloud to the constellations.
I lived a fugitive exploit in a suspense
I would have liked to eternalize.
The wind would spin further below.
After several years, plunged
into the backyard of the house, atop
some cacti and broken parapets,
with ragged clothes
and toothless gums, they found,
victim of an impossible illness,
a very old and wrinkled man
who was clutching shreds
of paper to his chest
and which could have been a kite.
{ Francisco Pérez Perdomo, Los ritos secretos, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1988 }
Francisco they call me,
that’s my grace
and I am from these places,
I was born in this land
called land of clouds
one day the sixteenth of September
of nineteen thirty, amid
the trees, the forests and a wind
that often emerged
from giant vessels
and would move in circles
through the nearby plaza.
I came into the world
escorted by luminous insects,
squirrels and lizards.
A few days after my birth
some owls and serpents
kidnapped me
and hid me in a corner of the fields.
In that lapse my parents didn’t see me.
When after a short while
my kidnappers released me,
I crossed the highlands
reclining on my mother’s skirt
while she rode on horseback
a skinny and chestnut mare.
That’s how I arrived at a neighboring village.
One could say the birds abducted me
and lay me down in a new district.
My feet grew
over mountains and cliffs, tangled
in thin and ragged
weeds and a spectral
vegetation that would moan day and night
climbing up stone walls.
From time to time a very sad
ditch would bind my legs,
throw me down onto thickets
and then lull me like a sibyl.
Little by little my body grew longer
in the plateaus behind those
kites that would write in the sphere
indecipherable celestial signs
and to whose tails I would cling.
For a long time the kites were
my umbilical chord.
One day, one day their strings dragged me
in a frenzied race
over the biggest plateau.
Then I was elevated, I moved further
from the earth, and repeatedly turning
my eyes to look back,
I would watch it not without a certain start,
bewitched I would fly above the distances.
Without realizing it I became,
almost insensibly, a remote point
barely discernible in the spaces.
Many years of an adventurous and avid existence
passed in this manner.
With utmost happiness
and robed with the sky’s layers
I would have spent my entire life there
deciphering that writing
and making signs at the world
with a white lamp
at times very agitated in my hands.
I ran about the moon.
The whistle of the stars
was the magic flute that retained me
in such high places.
In my familiarity with the stars
the noises of the ground didn’t lacerate my ears.
I spoke aloud to the constellations.
I lived a fugitive exploit in a suspense
I would have liked to eternalize.
The wind would spin further below.
After several years, plunged
into the backyard of the house, atop
some cacti and broken parapets,
with ragged clothes
and toothless gums, they found,
victim of an impossible illness,
a very old and wrinkled man
who was clutching shreds
of paper to his chest
and which could have been a kite.
{ Francisco Pérez Perdomo, Los ritos secretos, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1988 }
7.24.2012
La noche nos borra del espacio / Francisco Pérez Perdomo
Night erases us from space
Disjointed, formless voices
begin to rise from below.
They murmur in the air,
travel through the frozen hills
and silently draw near our house.
In the distant patios of that time
those voices still voiceless
mysteriously construct
phantasmal figures, raise
their registers and become
a single hallucinating scream.
Harrowing, the scream rides
on its wire edges, ululating
it crosses the backyard shadows,
insistently pierces the tree trunks,
whistles, arrives at our bed
and freezes our blood.
Overcome with terror,
night erases us from space.
{ Francisco Pérez Perdomo, El límite infinito, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1997 }
Disjointed, formless voices
begin to rise from below.
They murmur in the air,
travel through the frozen hills
and silently draw near our house.
In the distant patios of that time
those voices still voiceless
mysteriously construct
phantasmal figures, raise
their registers and become
a single hallucinating scream.
Harrowing, the scream rides
on its wire edges, ululating
it crosses the backyard shadows,
insistently pierces the tree trunks,
whistles, arrives at our bed
and freezes our blood.
Overcome with terror,
night erases us from space.
{ Francisco Pérez Perdomo, El límite infinito, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1997 }
7.22.2012
Y me suspendía en la inmortalidad / Francisco Pérez Perdomo
And would suspend me in immortality
I never knew what that was.
It seems like an ecstasy.
I never knew.
It began to take over my forces.
It threw me to the ground
and would make me feel the rumor of the firmament.
It would make me intemporal.
I would let it happen.
It would envelop me with its layers of fire.
At the same time it would make me delirious and suffer.
It came from the depths within me
and it would run through me, lighting me up.
It was my vigil and my dream.
It would bring its luminous face near
in the intensity of the shadows.
With open eyes I would see it pass by.
It was like a painted sky.
That’s what it was. A meteor. An errant light
in the darkness.
It would stop the gust of time for instants
and would suspend me in immortality.
{ Francisco Pérez Perdomo, El límite infinito, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1997 }
I never knew what that was.
It seems like an ecstasy.
I never knew.
It began to take over my forces.
It threw me to the ground
and would make me feel the rumor of the firmament.
It would make me intemporal.
I would let it happen.
It would envelop me with its layers of fire.
At the same time it would make me delirious and suffer.
It came from the depths within me
and it would run through me, lighting me up.
It was my vigil and my dream.
It would bring its luminous face near
in the intensity of the shadows.
With open eyes I would see it pass by.
It was like a painted sky.
That’s what it was. A meteor. An errant light
in the darkness.
It would stop the gust of time for instants
and would suspend me in immortality.
{ Francisco Pérez Perdomo, El límite infinito, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1997 }
7.21.2012
Una cosa innominada te llama / Francisco Pérez Perdomo
A nameless thing calls you
A nameless thing calls you.
You listen to it in the uncertainty.
It’s like a strange and fictitious voice
crossing an abolished space.
Do you hear it?
It could very well be a bird
that incessantly pecks in your ears.
You can’t move.
It paralyzes you.
An infinite desolation courses through you.
It isolates you from the world.
It makes you cry.
It’s something like a blurry voice
and it surges from the deepest realms.
It suspends you in the air.
It surrounds you.
It’s barely a murmur that envelops you
and makes you delirious in the vast silence.
{ Francisco Pérez Perdomo, El límite infinito, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1997 }
A nameless thing calls you.
You listen to it in the uncertainty.
It’s like a strange and fictitious voice
crossing an abolished space.
Do you hear it?
It could very well be a bird
that incessantly pecks in your ears.
You can’t move.
It paralyzes you.
An infinite desolation courses through you.
It isolates you from the world.
It makes you cry.
It’s something like a blurry voice
and it surges from the deepest realms.
It suspends you in the air.
It surrounds you.
It’s barely a murmur that envelops you
and makes you delirious in the vast silence.
{ Francisco Pérez Perdomo, El límite infinito, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1997 }
7.18.2012
José Antonio Ramos Sucre por fin se lee en inglés
(Michelle Roche Rodríguez, “José Antonio Ramos Sucre por fin se lee en inglés,” El Nacional, 17 julio 2012)
7.16.2012
Alquimia del bárbaro / Juan Calzadilla
Barbarian’s Alchemy
Rimbaud discards his poet’s investiture to assume his Eurocentric condition. In the African colonies he finds, oh, his next plunder. What follows isn’t poetry.
On the other hand, Blaise Cendrars is a reclaimant of the colonialist Rimbaud. In his adventures in Africa he goes in search of a photographic alchemy of the verb. For him poetry starts to be something that’s not exclusively in words, but in the glance, in his Kodak and in journeys.
As for me: I’m one of those who thinks of his work as something exterior to myself. I’m not much of a protagonist. The place where I find myself, in relation to my work, isn’t very defined, not even in a journey to the interior of my own self.
{Juan Calzadilla, Libro de las poéticas, Caracas: Fundación Editorial el perro y la rana, 2006}
Rimbaud discards his poet’s investiture to assume his Eurocentric condition. In the African colonies he finds, oh, his next plunder. What follows isn’t poetry.
On the other hand, Blaise Cendrars is a reclaimant of the colonialist Rimbaud. In his adventures in Africa he goes in search of a photographic alchemy of the verb. For him poetry starts to be something that’s not exclusively in words, but in the glance, in his Kodak and in journeys.
As for me: I’m one of those who thinks of his work as something exterior to myself. I’m not much of a protagonist. The place where I find myself, in relation to my work, isn’t very defined, not even in a journey to the interior of my own self.
{Juan Calzadilla, Libro de las poéticas, Caracas: Fundación Editorial el perro y la rana, 2006}
7.15.2012
Del texto / Juan Calzadilla
Of the Text
Some have experienced the feeling of poetry to such an extreme degree that the fact of having expressed it in their lives with the same intensity by which they would like to have written it, has incapacitated them and, for that reason, exempted them from putting it into words.
But doesn’t the nature of poetry consist of the act of living it? No. As it doesn’t consist of the act of writing it. It consists of writing itself. This is why the true poet doesn’t have a real existence.
{Juan Calzadilla, Libro de las poéticas, Caracas: Fundación Editorial el perro y la rana, 2006}
Some have experienced the feeling of poetry to such an extreme degree that the fact of having expressed it in their lives with the same intensity by which they would like to have written it, has incapacitated them and, for that reason, exempted them from putting it into words.
But doesn’t the nature of poetry consist of the act of living it? No. As it doesn’t consist of the act of writing it. It consists of writing itself. This is why the true poet doesn’t have a real existence.
{Juan Calzadilla, Libro de las poéticas, Caracas: Fundación Editorial el perro y la rana, 2006}
7.10.2012
“La poesía es una forma de vivir” - Entrevista Luis Enrique Belmonte, poeta / Daniel Fermín
“Poetry is a way of life” - Interview with Luis Enrique Belmonte, Poet
The Venezuelan poet took a few elements from his job and applied them to his verses. “I realized that psychiatry is related to writing. Not on a thematic level, but in terms of other tools. Clinical observation, for example, is something that has elements of the poetic. As well as attentive listening,” said the writer, who has published six previous books.
The author of Inútil registro sees literature as a psychedelic experience, as a form of revealing the mind’s content. However, he doesn’t assume it as self-therapy. “People say that poets don’t need psychoanalysis. I understand that it can be, at certain times, a means of exploration, but it’s not therapy. I think it can be, actually, a risky career. Poetry is sometimes nourished by states of psychic turbulence,” added the writer.
Belmonte’s last book was Salvar a los elefantes, a short novel. That incursion into fiction perhaps led him to the prose-like verses that predominate in his most recent book, which was published by Lugar Común. “The collection has a tone that leans toward fiction. I don’t know if it was because of that novel. Many of my poems have those registers. I make a more communicative, more discursive poem. I’ve always had an approximation to prose.”
The author himself had already said that Compañero paciente is one of those books that he’s enjoyed writing. “I really liked how, unconsciously, it’s very oriented toward the more fraternal aspects of life. That seemed pleasant to me. To think of a book that’s about the fraternity of beings, with friendship amidst the circumstances the poetic subject encounters.”
In the book he offers a portrait of the solidarity that exists among patients (“He says that when things get bad / one forgets they can get worse,” page 25), or the life of an anatomist (who is “dying several times without finally dying,” page 41). He also offers a section in which he gives advice to street dogs (“Don’t complain so much about hunger: keep looking, you always find something,” page 83, or “Read Cervantes in a kennel,” page 81). “I think there are many processes of healing tied to this book. I think we can conceive of poetry as a means of preparing for life. And life is tied to death. Poetry is a way of life,” explained the winner of Spain’s Adonais Prize for Poetry in 1998.
Belmonte also won, in Venezuela in 1996, the Fernando Paz Castillo Poetry Prize. And in an old interview he said prizes can interrupt the course of a budding voice. It happened to him. “It distracted me a bit. Suddenly you’re no longer anonymous, you begin to receive accolades that don’t let you focus on the process of writing. The ideal condition for a writer is solitude or anonymity. Or the anonymity that solitude grants.”
Since then he publishes very little. Or much less than before. It took him five years to write Compañero paciente. “It has to do with a more mature awareness of the responsibility of saying. And one still doubts. I corrected this book until the day it was sent to the printer (a copy in his house has corrections marked with a pen). That’s when I understood you never finish a book, but instead say goodbye to it,” concluded Belmonte. Poetry requires patience.
{ Daniel Fermín, El Universal, 6 July 2012 }
(Photo: Enio Perdomo)One morning in the 90s, Luis Enrique Belmonte (Caracas, 1971) skipped an exam at the Escuela de Medicina to read César Vallejo. This is how the doctor began his relationship with literature, which opens a new chapter with the publication of Compañero paciente, a collection of poems that’s nourished by his experience as a psychiatrist in order to assume an empathetic view toward suffering. Proof that poetry can also be therapeutic.
The Venezuelan poet took a few elements from his job and applied them to his verses. “I realized that psychiatry is related to writing. Not on a thematic level, but in terms of other tools. Clinical observation, for example, is something that has elements of the poetic. As well as attentive listening,” said the writer, who has published six previous books.
The author of Inútil registro sees literature as a psychedelic experience, as a form of revealing the mind’s content. However, he doesn’t assume it as self-therapy. “People say that poets don’t need psychoanalysis. I understand that it can be, at certain times, a means of exploration, but it’s not therapy. I think it can be, actually, a risky career. Poetry is sometimes nourished by states of psychic turbulence,” added the writer.
Belmonte’s last book was Salvar a los elefantes, a short novel. That incursion into fiction perhaps led him to the prose-like verses that predominate in his most recent book, which was published by Lugar Común. “The collection has a tone that leans toward fiction. I don’t know if it was because of that novel. Many of my poems have those registers. I make a more communicative, more discursive poem. I’ve always had an approximation to prose.”
The author himself had already said that Compañero paciente is one of those books that he’s enjoyed writing. “I really liked how, unconsciously, it’s very oriented toward the more fraternal aspects of life. That seemed pleasant to me. To think of a book that’s about the fraternity of beings, with friendship amidst the circumstances the poetic subject encounters.”
In the book he offers a portrait of the solidarity that exists among patients (“He says that when things get bad / one forgets they can get worse,” page 25), or the life of an anatomist (who is “dying several times without finally dying,” page 41). He also offers a section in which he gives advice to street dogs (“Don’t complain so much about hunger: keep looking, you always find something,” page 83, or “Read Cervantes in a kennel,” page 81). “I think there are many processes of healing tied to this book. I think we can conceive of poetry as a means of preparing for life. And life is tied to death. Poetry is a way of life,” explained the winner of Spain’s Adonais Prize for Poetry in 1998.
Belmonte also won, in Venezuela in 1996, the Fernando Paz Castillo Poetry Prize. And in an old interview he said prizes can interrupt the course of a budding voice. It happened to him. “It distracted me a bit. Suddenly you’re no longer anonymous, you begin to receive accolades that don’t let you focus on the process of writing. The ideal condition for a writer is solitude or anonymity. Or the anonymity that solitude grants.”
Since then he publishes very little. Or much less than before. It took him five years to write Compañero paciente. “It has to do with a more mature awareness of the responsibility of saying. And one still doubts. I corrected this book until the day it was sent to the printer (a copy in his house has corrections marked with a pen). That’s when I understood you never finish a book, but instead say goodbye to it,” concluded Belmonte. Poetry requires patience.
{ Daniel Fermín, El Universal, 6 July 2012 }
7.08.2012
El monólogo / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Monologue
The knight of the disorderly thoughts registers the sea. He leans back on a perennial rock. He drops from his hand onto the floor the hat and the sword.
A feudal bird, of ashen livery, dominates the desert air. How many battles were fought within view of the towers!
The knight discovers the image of his life in the solitude of the haughty bird. Does he not succumb in bitterness and refuse society since the abduction of his beloved, on the day of an incursion by the infidels?
The knight thinks of redeeming her and trusts in the mercy of a happy fate, lavished in contemporary reality. He has ruined himself with misfortune and wanders amidst the lucubrations of an evaporated understanding.
He invents, amid sighs and smiles, the end of his inquietude. The accidents of his fortune and the imaginary unraveling are found in more than one pilgrim fable for children, recited in a vespertine phase.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The knight of the disorderly thoughts registers the sea. He leans back on a perennial rock. He drops from his hand onto the floor the hat and the sword.
A feudal bird, of ashen livery, dominates the desert air. How many battles were fought within view of the towers!
The knight discovers the image of his life in the solitude of the haughty bird. Does he not succumb in bitterness and refuse society since the abduction of his beloved, on the day of an incursion by the infidels?
The knight thinks of redeeming her and trusts in the mercy of a happy fate, lavished in contemporary reality. He has ruined himself with misfortune and wanders amidst the lucubrations of an evaporated understanding.
He invents, amid sighs and smiles, the end of his inquietude. The accidents of his fortune and the imaginary unraveling are found in more than one pilgrim fable for children, recited in a vespertine phase.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
7.05.2012
El bejín / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Churl
I lived in the shadow of a church in the devout city. The air of a faint sky would stir up the dust and spread it around the severe confines.
I would muddle myself in the pleasures of a free life and lose my senses while sipping a depraved liquor all alone.
I belonged to a fraternity of rogues and I would raise and serve myself with their renown. I wasn’t able to perform with lucidity and would refer pusillanimous heists and robberies.
The most faithful of my companions guided me in the assault of a palace. The adventure became my repentance and the loss of his life. He was precipitated from a large window.
I picked up in my attic, that same night, a lacerated child. He would call me blowing hiccups and sighs of pity and grief. I cursed his round eyes and his stork nose. His head was a mountain of obstinate hair.
I strained to facilitate his life and make his infancy prosper and I would surround him with the solicitude of a philanthropist. He angered me with his voracity and his prickly character and I sent him away filling him punches.
The abuse of my impatience brought, according to my conjectures, a quick unraveling. I persist in maintaining the identity of my frequent friend with the perverse child.
My capture by the apparitors of justice came on the day after my rage. I was pressed to confession by means of the whip and the wheel. The surgeon retired me from the chamber when the syncope threatened with death.
The judge moved to pity me and celebrated the aid of a person in the discovery of my cell. He reproduced the gesture and the habits of my previous counselor.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I lived in the shadow of a church in the devout city. The air of a faint sky would stir up the dust and spread it around the severe confines.
I would muddle myself in the pleasures of a free life and lose my senses while sipping a depraved liquor all alone.
I belonged to a fraternity of rogues and I would raise and serve myself with their renown. I wasn’t able to perform with lucidity and would refer pusillanimous heists and robberies.
The most faithful of my companions guided me in the assault of a palace. The adventure became my repentance and the loss of his life. He was precipitated from a large window.
I picked up in my attic, that same night, a lacerated child. He would call me blowing hiccups and sighs of pity and grief. I cursed his round eyes and his stork nose. His head was a mountain of obstinate hair.
I strained to facilitate his life and make his infancy prosper and I would surround him with the solicitude of a philanthropist. He angered me with his voracity and his prickly character and I sent him away filling him punches.
The abuse of my impatience brought, according to my conjectures, a quick unraveling. I persist in maintaining the identity of my frequent friend with the perverse child.
My capture by the apparitors of justice came on the day after my rage. I was pressed to confession by means of the whip and the wheel. The surgeon retired me from the chamber when the syncope threatened with death.
The judge moved to pity me and celebrated the aid of a person in the discovery of my cell. He reproduced the gesture and the habits of my previous counselor.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
7.03.2012
FROM THE LIVID COUNTRY
7.02.2012
Trova / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Ballad
The dwarf envied the fortune of Amadis and deliberately mistook him for the knight who was robbed and sacrificed at the foot of the tree at the crossroads. He would run through the drowsy roads, backwards and riding the dirty goat, the one who screamed, and he would disseminate horror to the far reaches. An acrobat had drawn the mount on a card.
The idle dwarf directed himself in such a manner to a mountain pass, a place distinguished by the death of a maiden, and solicited from a false creature the punishment of Amadis and his nymph. An old woman concealed her Gorgon mouth, a buckle with a single tooth and imitated the noble appearance of Oriana. Her dexterity couldn’t manage to reproduce the eyes of celestial vagueness, lifted in mute thought, afflicted by the paladin’s absence.
I came to the presence of Oriana and gave her good tidings, throwing myself at her feet. Her enemy didn’t come out ahead imitating her gesture and Amadis was to be found far away and was not one and the same with the gallant man sacrificed at the foot of the tree, at the intersection of thoroughfares.
The foolish witch and the despicable dwarf wasted the scheme in separating the chaste lovers and fell out with Satan and denied him the shameful tribute. The master of the celibates and of the egoists, censor and falsifier of human effects, had provided succor, inert. He reduced the accomplices to secrecy, wounding them and twisting their cervix, humiliating them with the treatment inflicted upon poultry yard birds.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The dwarf envied the fortune of Amadis and deliberately mistook him for the knight who was robbed and sacrificed at the foot of the tree at the crossroads. He would run through the drowsy roads, backwards and riding the dirty goat, the one who screamed, and he would disseminate horror to the far reaches. An acrobat had drawn the mount on a card.
The idle dwarf directed himself in such a manner to a mountain pass, a place distinguished by the death of a maiden, and solicited from a false creature the punishment of Amadis and his nymph. An old woman concealed her Gorgon mouth, a buckle with a single tooth and imitated the noble appearance of Oriana. Her dexterity couldn’t manage to reproduce the eyes of celestial vagueness, lifted in mute thought, afflicted by the paladin’s absence.
I came to the presence of Oriana and gave her good tidings, throwing myself at her feet. Her enemy didn’t come out ahead imitating her gesture and Amadis was to be found far away and was not one and the same with the gallant man sacrificed at the foot of the tree, at the intersection of thoroughfares.
The foolish witch and the despicable dwarf wasted the scheme in separating the chaste lovers and fell out with Satan and denied him the shameful tribute. The master of the celibates and of the egoists, censor and falsifier of human effects, had provided succor, inert. He reduced the accomplices to secrecy, wounding them and twisting their cervix, humiliating them with the treatment inflicted upon poultry yard birds.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
7.01.2012
La frontera / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Frontier
The noblewoman authorizes the servants, simple maids, in the use of the crossbow and the bow. She distinguishes, forcing her ear, the kettledrums of the Moors.
The Castilians have divided themselves into factions and forget their malice toward the infidels. A violent prelate accuses them of befriending the adversary, overlooking their lewd manners, preferring the shade of the palm and the jasmine atmosphere to the glare of the pulverulent journey.
A leper with a scornful countenance does not limit himself to offending the serenity of the fountains, but instead breaks into the invader’s enterprise, assuming the service of pilot. He has been trained among the Jews and heretics of Languedoc and he disseminates their guilty doctrines. The illness precipitates him from greatness.
The prelate knows of the conflict by an original means. He struggles to repress an anxiety, a sudden fright, and goes to the secret of the sanctuary, to reverend consultation. A trickle of blood divides the corporal, the Eucharistic cloth.
The prelate heads toward the plaza, gathers the parishioners in a warlike fashion and induces them to a victorious enthusiasm.
The mob of the humble runs to suppress the siege and admires the heroine atop the wall. A sad old man with a lofty tunic proclaims the arrival of sanctity and valor within a single person. In dreams he has seen, guided by a youthful voice, the coat of arms of a diamantine splendor, thrown at the foot of a cross.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The noblewoman authorizes the servants, simple maids, in the use of the crossbow and the bow. She distinguishes, forcing her ear, the kettledrums of the Moors.
The Castilians have divided themselves into factions and forget their malice toward the infidels. A violent prelate accuses them of befriending the adversary, overlooking their lewd manners, preferring the shade of the palm and the jasmine atmosphere to the glare of the pulverulent journey.
A leper with a scornful countenance does not limit himself to offending the serenity of the fountains, but instead breaks into the invader’s enterprise, assuming the service of pilot. He has been trained among the Jews and heretics of Languedoc and he disseminates their guilty doctrines. The illness precipitates him from greatness.
The prelate knows of the conflict by an original means. He struggles to repress an anxiety, a sudden fright, and goes to the secret of the sanctuary, to reverend consultation. A trickle of blood divides the corporal, the Eucharistic cloth.
The prelate heads toward the plaza, gathers the parishioners in a warlike fashion and induces them to a victorious enthusiasm.
The mob of the humble runs to suppress the siege and admires the heroine atop the wall. A sad old man with a lofty tunic proclaims the arrival of sanctity and valor within a single person. In dreams he has seen, guided by a youthful voice, the coat of arms of a diamantine splendor, thrown at the foot of a cross.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
6.26.2012
The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka
(Alberto Barrera Tyszka in 2011 by Vasco Szinetar)
Alberto Barrera Tyszka, tr. Margaret Jull Costa, The Sickness (Portland & New York: Tin House Books, 2012)
Why has Venezuelan literature remained so completely untranslated and unknown in the United States and England? When compared to other Latin American countries, such as Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, or Chile, the number of Venezuelan writers translated into English has always been minimal. This hasn’t been for a lack of innovative, important writers. But Venezuela’s invisibility in the global literary landscape is an issue we don’t have time to address here. Regardless of that dilemma, Venezuelan literature has been experiencing a boom for the past decade, with an avalanche of publications, awards, workshops, presentations and a growing readership in Venezuela, Latin America and Spain. The Venezuelan boom is particularly evident in the field of fiction, where several generations of writers are currently producing work that is worthy of attention well beyond the country’s (or Latin America’s) borders. This spring gave us the publication in English of a short novel that’s emblematic of the Venezuelan literary boom at the beginning of the 21st century.
Alberto Barrera Tyszka (Caracas, 1960) was awarded the Herralde Prize by Editorial Anagrama in Barcelona, Spain for his novel La enfermedad in 2006. The award, which has been bestowed on the likes of Roberto Bolaño, Enrique Vila-Matas and Juan Villoro, helped catapult Barrera Tyszka’s name throughout the Spanish-speaking world. In Venezuela, Barrera Tyszka is a widely-read journalist, novelist and poet. His Sunday column in the newspaper El Nacional is one of the most widely-read in the country. There he tends to focus on Venezuela’s continuing political crisis, offering a partisan yet open-minded analysis of the country’s complicated situation from an opposition point of view. Barrera Tyszka makes his living as a scriptwriter for Spanish-language soap operas, or telenovelas. He’s also a Professor of Literature in the Escuela de Letras at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. These branches of his life as a public intellectual aren’t necessarily evident in this quick-paced, intimate novel. And yet, the efficient prose imbued with subtle poetic charge that Barrera Tyszka employs in this novel makes it a rare event. Writing about a terminal situation where the death of one of the main characters is announced within the first paragraph, he manages to keep the reader engaged in the unfolding layers of several lives that intersect with a dying father and his son during a period of several weeks.
In 2010, La enfermedad was published in a translation by Margaret Jull Acosta as The Sickness in England, where it received positive reviews and was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Now it’s been published here in the United States by Tin House Books. The novel concerns a doctor in Caracas named Andrés Miranda who finds out his father has terminal cancer. Dr. Miranda struggles with the news and how to tell his father, Javier Miranda. This central storyline is accompanied by several others that Barrera Tyszka masterfully weaves alongside the protagonist’s awareness of his father’s impending death. We follow the drama of a patient of Dr. Miranda who is convinced he has a grave illness, even after several doctors find nothing wrong with him. The patient begins to stalk Dr. Miranda and this leads him into an e-mail correspondence with the doctor’s secretary. Another thread develops after Javier Miranda finds out he is dying and tries to establish some sense of dignity as he faces a terrifying reality. We get to know his maid, a young woman who is struggling to keep her teenage son safe from the dangers of the hillside slum where they live, while helping the dying man confront his death. She ends up accompanying Javier to a self-help group called “Learning to Die” and they develop a friendship that remains distant yet irrevocably dependent on the other’s situation.
While the the central plot and its various satellites are wonderfully balanced, the novel builds up a tension the reader begins to feel as the inevitable death draws near. Barrera Tyszka portrays his characters, whether they are central to the novel or make minor appearances of less than a page, as living beings whose imperfections and complexities can sometimes make the book feel like a documentary, as though we’re peeking over someone’s shoulder at moments that might be too private or vulnerable. Barrera Tyszka’s varying roles as a telenovela scriptwriter, poet and newspaper columnist seem to contribute to the way language in this novel is so successfully employed, simultaneously accessible yet evocatively poetic. One example of this dual quality in his prose is the motif of language itself, and how it’s distorted by illness. When Andrés Miranda first sees the results of the tests that reveal his father’s cancer, we are presented with the idea of language, words themselves, being destroyed by the body and its illness:
“Andrés has a hedgehog on his tongue. His throat fills with pineapple rind.” (22)
Throughout the novel, Andrés alludes to a variety of writers whose work addresses the philosophical implications of medicine and the awareness of death. These interludes include figures such as Charles Baudelaire, Michel Foucault, William Carlos Willams and Susan Sontag. In this sense, we’re never able to forget that this is a poet’s novel, one that’s just as concerned with ideas as it is with action, plot and character development. The axis of the novel is a trip Andrés and Javier take to the island of Margarita, where he hopes to break the news to his father. They spend a week there and Andrés is unable to address the issue, until the words finally come out as if on their own, awkwardly, and without grace. His father is obviously stunned, and in describing his reaction Barrera Tyszka again turns to the disintegration of language:
“Andrés could see that his eyes were wet with tears and that beneath those tears lay something resembling both melancholy and rancor, some emotion for which the dictionary did not yet have a word.” (118)
Language is one of several themes that Barrera Tyszka obsessively returns to throughout the novel (along with memory, social norms, family, books, and health). These obsessive repetitions are shaped into a coherent story told in pieces, where the end result is known from the fist page. What keeps our attention is the way the story is told, a multitude of vivid fragments clustered around Javier Miranda’s dying body. There is no relief in this novel for the reader, much less for the doctor who’s accustomed to being a detached observer:
“For the first time, it occurs to him that the illness might take away from himself and his father something he had never thought it would: conversation, the ability to talk to each other. The illness is destroying their words as well.” (154)
What Alberto Barrera Tyszka does provide us is a map of tenderness, elusive moments of pain endured in the company of others, whether family or friends or acquaintances. It’s telling that the ever-present topic of Venezuela’s political crisis is turned into a minor aside in the book. Andrés and Javier do talk about it, but soon grow bored of the topic. Barrera Tyszka is instead concerned with creating a novel that is in a sense timeless, although the setting could only be Caracas, Venezuela in the early 2000s. The Sickness ends with yet another poetic image based on the power of language to interpret and heal. We’re not spared from Javier Miranda’s inevitable decline, but we are reminded of why the novel remains such a dynamic form, one that can include any type of discourse in the service of its goals, among them to entertain and enlighten.
6.20.2012
El tótem / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Totem
I had lost a year in ceremonies with the king of an occult country. The sagacious courtiers would annul my solicitude and suffer the venting of my protest with a neutral smile.
I would procure to intimidate them with the name of my sovereign and emphatically describe the infinite resources of his armada. They thought they were safe in the precincts of their mountains.
I would entertain the uneasiness critiquing the family statute. I would take pleasure in dealing with the infantile women and happy children and would discover the effects of a childhood that relied on capturing the quick present. A passage in verse, the first matter entrusted to memory, written on a silk sash, would insist in a picturesque manner on successive reality.
I have never seen such solicitude for the simple creatures of nature. The children would reveal an indulgent spirit in their familiarity with the cicadas and butterflies gathered, throughout the night, in a wicker cage and they would entertain themselves with the pirouettes and whirlpools of some fish of ephemeral substance, circulating in an obsidian aquarium.
A courtesan, a species of seneschal, visited me once with the message that the inconveniences of my embassy had been overcome. I had to witness, before my return and as a sign of friendship, a party intended to reconcile me to the genius defenders of the territory. The courtesan walked off after adjusting his authoritarian fan on my shoulder.
The party was limited to reciting in front of a unicorn fallow deer, symbol of happiness, painted on a scarlet canvas, a few hymns of abolished signification. Some bald priests kept printing a similar sound on their brass tambourines.
One of the officiants renounced the long dress and the unpleasant instrument with the purpose of facilitating my exit. He governed my rustic raft for an entire day, lever in hand, depending on the course of a tumultuous river.
The unicorn fallow deer, sign of a happy omen, was seen over the peak of an extinguished volcano.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I had lost a year in ceremonies with the king of an occult country. The sagacious courtiers would annul my solicitude and suffer the venting of my protest with a neutral smile.
I would procure to intimidate them with the name of my sovereign and emphatically describe the infinite resources of his armada. They thought they were safe in the precincts of their mountains.
I would entertain the uneasiness critiquing the family statute. I would take pleasure in dealing with the infantile women and happy children and would discover the effects of a childhood that relied on capturing the quick present. A passage in verse, the first matter entrusted to memory, written on a silk sash, would insist in a picturesque manner on successive reality.
I have never seen such solicitude for the simple creatures of nature. The children would reveal an indulgent spirit in their familiarity with the cicadas and butterflies gathered, throughout the night, in a wicker cage and they would entertain themselves with the pirouettes and whirlpools of some fish of ephemeral substance, circulating in an obsidian aquarium.
A courtesan, a species of seneschal, visited me once with the message that the inconveniences of my embassy had been overcome. I had to witness, before my return and as a sign of friendship, a party intended to reconcile me to the genius defenders of the territory. The courtesan walked off after adjusting his authoritarian fan on my shoulder.
The party was limited to reciting in front of a unicorn fallow deer, symbol of happiness, painted on a scarlet canvas, a few hymns of abolished signification. Some bald priests kept printing a similar sound on their brass tambourines.
One of the officiants renounced the long dress and the unpleasant instrument with the purpose of facilitating my exit. He governed my rustic raft for an entire day, lever in hand, depending on the course of a tumultuous river.
The unicorn fallow deer, sign of a happy omen, was seen over the peak of an extinguished volcano.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
6.18.2012
El rezagado / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Straggler
The tempest invades the night. The wind imitates the puffing of a cetacean and beats the doors and windows. The water sweeps the channels of the tile roofs.
I have left my bed, and have leaned, to watch the street, out the window of the living room in ruins. The meteors light up a white panorama.
I’m alone in the reestablished darkness, keeping vigil over the earth’s sleep.
My companions, accustomed to the commotion of steppes and deserts, abandoned me perfidiously in this village, stage of a risky journey. They refused to admit me to the benefit of their wealth, holding for themselves alone the secret of their metals and stones. They would mention a green and salty lake, hidden in a jungle of pines, threatened by the thick fog.
The village is the encampment of a ferocious band. Men with yellowish skin circle uneasily, sword at hand, conical hat soaked.
I encourage the hope of returning to my meridional soil, close to the sea burnished by the sun.
I have negotiated my escape with a needy man, of the vilified aboriginal race.
He offers to guide me through unused roads, behind the backs of homicidal highway men.
He and I will definitely escape from this place, where the victims on hooks invite the birds of prey, raised amid the grim clouds.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The tempest invades the night. The wind imitates the puffing of a cetacean and beats the doors and windows. The water sweeps the channels of the tile roofs.
I have left my bed, and have leaned, to watch the street, out the window of the living room in ruins. The meteors light up a white panorama.
I’m alone in the reestablished darkness, keeping vigil over the earth’s sleep.
My companions, accustomed to the commotion of steppes and deserts, abandoned me perfidiously in this village, stage of a risky journey. They refused to admit me to the benefit of their wealth, holding for themselves alone the secret of their metals and stones. They would mention a green and salty lake, hidden in a jungle of pines, threatened by the thick fog.
The village is the encampment of a ferocious band. Men with yellowish skin circle uneasily, sword at hand, conical hat soaked.
I encourage the hope of returning to my meridional soil, close to the sea burnished by the sun.
I have negotiated my escape with a needy man, of the vilified aboriginal race.
He offers to guide me through unused roads, behind the backs of homicidal highway men.
He and I will definitely escape from this place, where the victims on hooks invite the birds of prey, raised amid the grim clouds.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
6.15.2012
El viaje de Himilcón / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Himilco’s Journey
The squadron’s admiral stepped into the temple. He was worn out from the tribulations of the journey. He was coming to carry out the vows enunciated, under danger, in an unknown sea. At his side he carried the volume where he had consigned the navigation’s portents. He placed it in the hands of the priest, whom he approached modestly and with dignity, preparing him with a reverence. That tale would have to be inscribed, with a chisel, at the foot of the country’s idol, in honor of the maritime city.
The ships would reach port broken and uninhabited. The sailors became scarce amid a continuous sea, close to the abyss, at the edge of the world.
Some of them received loathsome burial in the heart of the waters. Many lost their lives under the effluvium of a morbid sky, and their souls lament the ground of the native country from an ignored coast.
The survivors sighted, on the sunset path, the kingdom of the afternoon, islands fenced by wonders, and discovered the refuge of the sun, exhausted farmer.
Some barbarians captured on the continent, pilots of dismasted ships, spoke marvels of their visit to a warm country, beyond the vespertine mirage; and those men of fierce semblance and grey eyes, raised under a furtive sun, motivated with their insidious fables the beginning of the return.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The squadron’s admiral stepped into the temple. He was worn out from the tribulations of the journey. He was coming to carry out the vows enunciated, under danger, in an unknown sea. At his side he carried the volume where he had consigned the navigation’s portents. He placed it in the hands of the priest, whom he approached modestly and with dignity, preparing him with a reverence. That tale would have to be inscribed, with a chisel, at the foot of the country’s idol, in honor of the maritime city.
The ships would reach port broken and uninhabited. The sailors became scarce amid a continuous sea, close to the abyss, at the edge of the world.
Some of them received loathsome burial in the heart of the waters. Many lost their lives under the effluvium of a morbid sky, and their souls lament the ground of the native country from an ignored coast.
The survivors sighted, on the sunset path, the kingdom of the afternoon, islands fenced by wonders, and discovered the refuge of the sun, exhausted farmer.
Some barbarians captured on the continent, pilots of dismasted ships, spoke marvels of their visit to a warm country, beyond the vespertine mirage; and those men of fierce semblance and grey eyes, raised under a furtive sun, motivated with their insidious fables the beginning of the return.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
6.05.2012
El hijo del anciano / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Old Man’s Son
A few burin lines would be enough for the likeness of the elemental landscape.
Some lean tree, stick skeleton, sign of honor, was living on the burnt ground.
Black mountains, of a translucent profile, were enclosing the valley.
My house would disappear, at the end of an uncertain day, amid the inundation of the fluid night.
The subterranean noises would last until the advent of the delayed sun. Superhuman forces were removing the stone from the sepulchers.
I was dividing the uniform life between reading epics and tragedies and the habits of an unsettled youth.
I conceived the image of an infanta, threatened by the silentiaries in the palace of fear. I would only kiss the fringe of her mantle on my knees.
One day I ventured to the pastime of hunting on a venerated day, notwithstanding the warnings of my progenitor. The old man of the infallible sayings, an aficionado of narration, would rest in a majestic chair of primitive art.
An invisible trumpet, lost in the mountain, strayed the dogs of my pack.
After a fruitless day, I penetrated to rest in the chamber of an illusory home. The chimeras surged gently from the darkness of my drowsiness. I thought I was visiting the palace of fear, where the infanta of my passion was confronting, in punishment, the trance of death. The ministers and servants were warning and imposing the secret. The exhausted lamps were releasing long hairs of smoke in the hall covered in black cloth.
I awoke, close to morning, in the middle of the countryside.
My head was resting on a stone. My hair was humid with dew and, on my face, the light of a diluted moon.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
A few burin lines would be enough for the likeness of the elemental landscape.
Some lean tree, stick skeleton, sign of honor, was living on the burnt ground.
Black mountains, of a translucent profile, were enclosing the valley.
My house would disappear, at the end of an uncertain day, amid the inundation of the fluid night.
The subterranean noises would last until the advent of the delayed sun. Superhuman forces were removing the stone from the sepulchers.
I was dividing the uniform life between reading epics and tragedies and the habits of an unsettled youth.
I conceived the image of an infanta, threatened by the silentiaries in the palace of fear. I would only kiss the fringe of her mantle on my knees.
One day I ventured to the pastime of hunting on a venerated day, notwithstanding the warnings of my progenitor. The old man of the infallible sayings, an aficionado of narration, would rest in a majestic chair of primitive art.
An invisible trumpet, lost in the mountain, strayed the dogs of my pack.
After a fruitless day, I penetrated to rest in the chamber of an illusory home. The chimeras surged gently from the darkness of my drowsiness. I thought I was visiting the palace of fear, where the infanta of my passion was confronting, in punishment, the trance of death. The ministers and servants were warning and imposing the secret. The exhausted lamps were releasing long hairs of smoke in the hall covered in black cloth.
I awoke, close to morning, in the middle of the countryside.
My head was resting on a stone. My hair was humid with dew and, on my face, the light of a diluted moon.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)