La segunda versión / Guillermo Sucre

The Second Version

I myself didn’t even know what dark allegory
I was seeking. I wrote a poem and named it
“the secret plot,” as if I were naming
an enigmatic —I supposed it was more
elusive and infinite— plot. All I did
was naïvely spin the story
and its tautologies. Any life,
we know, is only its nakedness, that
slow plundering of time. How could I
overwhelm you, earth, with naive
pretensions. I just wanted to return
to your inclemency.

                       Always, I wrote,
the tree of the storm will unleash itself
over the River; in the mornings
the City will always flower beneath
young light, and in the eyes of a child
the vigil always and the purification
await.

                Life flows and changes,
but not everything that changes flows
with life. Preserve, earth, these
images, write with them what has
loved you. They are also epitaphs.


January, 1989




La segunda versión (1994)




{ Guillermo Sucre, Conversación con la intemperie. Seis poetas venezolanos, selección y prólogo de Gustavo Guerrero, Barcelona, España: Galaxia Gutenberg/Círculo de Lectores, 2008 }