Muros / Guillermo Sucre

Walls

The stone perpetuates its own solitude
Constructs a vision
These walls don’t limit the sky
They concentrate it
The wind doesn’t blow in the backyard
Where I stop
A sun overwhelms me in its gleam
A crevice an armed salamander
Forgotten goddess restoring me in wounded fire
Something isolates me from the world
Blind I see myself with the eyes
That tomorrow will be a memory
Bird wandering in the unique foliage
Where its music is more limpid
The house is the labyrinth and I know a wooden plank
Encompasses it at night with stealth
This is where space begins
Another secret is spaced
I don’t name the fig tree
I’m talking about this thin, eroded
Line of light
That separates me from what separates me
I’m in an unknown city
Between higher walls
Ivy devoured by rust
Nothing belongs to me
And everything belongs to me
I move through the dead leaves that autumn governs
I’m just passing through
One step from what awaits me
From one city to another
Grey walls frozen gusts
Wine and the face I suddenly discover
An abandoned
Topaz stone
Caryatid with a single candescent glance
Everything there is of me in its
Bold nakedness




Guillermo Sucre, La mirada (Caracas: Tiempo Nuevo, 1970)