JOSÉ ANTONIO RAMOS SUCRE

 

 

                                     



PRELUDE

 

 

           I would like to stay between the empty dark, cruelty on earth hurts my senses, life an affliction. Flailing love has turned my insides bitter, memories long deserted rise again, pounding my shores. Howling wolves at night crowd the snowy desert.
           Movement, tiresome sign of reality, respects my fantastic asylum. I will have scaled it arm & arm with death. Death is a pale Beatrice, floating high above the flood of the moon. She will visit the sea of my grief, beneath her spell I will rest eternally, no longer lament beauty nor impossible love.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                     Translated by Cedar Sigo & Sara Bilandzija

 


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THE FUGITIVE



           I was sprinting forward with throbbing feet, emptiness ahead. Hail the rain upon black ground. I was hoping to take shelter in a forest of birch trees, thrashed from the storm. I hid awhile in the hole of an upturned tree. Roots arranged in a crown of defense against the brown bear. I sent away the bats with my bloody fists & screams. I was stunned by a blow to the head. Hallucination turned to nightmare in my hiding place. The only escape I knew was further on.
           I crossed mud covered in huge reeds, entering a second desert. I held off on starting a fire for fear of being caught. I slept buried in the cold. I could barely make out the shape of the messengers, bringing word from higher up. They followed me on horseback with their black dogs, fire in their eyes & rabid barking. The riders boasted a squirrel's tail.
           I divined upon crossing the borders the light of my asylum & ran to crouch at the feet of God. The icon listens with eyes down & smiles sweetly.


                                                                                                                                                     Translated by Cedar Sigo & Sara Bilandzija

 

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VALDEMAR'S DAUGHTER

           The pines appear humble at the foot of the palace that was raised with the exaltation of birds of prey by arrogant men. Its hulk conceals for some time the ascent of the moon after it has evaded the ridge of the mountain. Its imposing fabrication depresses the bold project of the Norseman, who merely approaches in peace. It is in accord with the rugged place where the torrent falls from the silent peak, frequented by eagles, and where the mystery of the neighboring jungle reigns. It receives from the mournful past a tremendous majesty that the prattling elves disturb with the night’s favor.
           The concealed flower in a grove is not consumed with more misfortune than the nobleman’s daughter in the modesty of the tower, very close to the restless clouds in the flight of the glacial winds. She delays amid the tempest with the daring of the bird in the vertex of a mast. She alleviates herself from the frozen clime, from the desert landscape, from the dark green tree with the spectacle of the snow. She then recalls the white and cold marble that guards the remains of her mother, at whose side she yearns to rest.
           She barely enjoys the company of the familiar deer, whose branched head discourages the tender gala of the mountains and prefers the mirror of motionless lakes. She has him under her feet when she rouses the deep and tremulous anguish of the harp.
           She sings the amorous winter lament that attains funereal nuptials with the earth; the wandering of the seafarers on the unpopulated sea; the threat of the deformed fish and the mass of the ice floe; the shipwrecked man’s fainting in the immense night; the white and fierce moon, a nuncio of death.
            She escapes captivity by means of the mystical strength of the exalted and solitary song. She cultivates the divine attribute in the manner of the pious exercise that consumes life and hurries time. She awaits the final hour with a melodious hymn for deserving in such a manner the place that the country’s faith augurs amid the winged and errant souls. Fortunate hope, liberal rescue from hard confinement: once free and with the new form, she will follow the birds on the journey to the festive and musical South.


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MYTH


           The king knows about the mutinies and disturbances provoked by the discontents throughout the capital. At each step he receives a messenger of gloomy semblance. He strikes up a startled dialogue regarding an ambiguous piece of news.

           The sovereign imagines the devastation of a fertile zone and the extermination of its farmers. A wild tribe has taken advantage of the kingdom’s confusion and has invaded it in carts armed with sickles. Some shameless witches, counselors to the savage caudillos, vociferate their prophecies amid the black residue of the bonfires. Through the heated air a red sun, of a warm country, is distinguished.

           The men of the wild tribe transport some leather tents on the backs of their disfigured dogs, avid for blood, and establish themselves with their women, throughout and comfortably, in caverns practiced in the ground. They reserve the tents for their chiefs.

           The king consults in vain the remedy of the state with the old captains, of pontifical beard and brief elocution.

           The prince, his son, ensues to interrupt the council, where a grievous silence reigns. He invents the healthy means and recommends them in an easy discourse. He possesses the virtual idea and the redemptive verb. He has just left the company of the bewildered.

           The veterans withdraw ceremonious and hopeful and bind themselves to his orders. The young man’s presence suppresses the fluctuations of victory and neutralizes the rebels’ stratagem.

           The hero has faced the danger with the assistance of an enthused throng.

           The day of his return, the beautiful women intone, from the terraces of the capitol palaces, a hymn of secular antiquity in praise of the rainbow.


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THE SWAN'S DAUGHTER


Goethe greeted the presence of Marie Antoinette in Frankfurt am Main, a pause on the road from Vienna to Paris, with the only French verses from his pen.


           I step off the paddle steamer and visit the Benedictine abbey on a peaceful shore of the Danube. An affable young man referred to me the origin of the building, facing a solitary chapel. The monks had built it at the edge of the ancient civilization, undamaged from the vestige of Caesar.

           The monks erected the abbey, expiatory monument, with the goal of eliminating the outcome of a profane affection from the memory of men and they chose the same spot where a pair of proud lovers threw themselves to their deaths in the current.

           The monks facilitated the rescue of Vienna, besieged by the Muslim. They went to the encounter with Sobieski, the hero of the primitive quiver and the Homeric shield, and guided him to where the chieftain of the infidels, assured of his victory, was freely conversing with his sons over a Bokara tapestry.

           The young man described for me with sadness the monks’ neglect of the reverend house, on a bitter day. The victors of a war were leveling the retinue and the village with the straw on the ground and they were scattering the enraged voice of their mechanisms of death in the desolate field.

           The young man assigned the origin of the hecatomb to Marie Antoinette’s wedding and celebrated her whiteness in fervent terms, wherein shone a chimerical love for the martyred queen. The last director of the pious establishment divined the consequences of the nuptial journey and abstained from glancing at the retinue. The ascetic had locked himself in a place unscathed by the rumors of the sensible world.

           The young man finished the lively apology of his heroine by citing the epithalamium of Goethe, the thinker who was a captive to the marmoreal beauty of Helen and a believer in the return of her ghost.

 

 

 

 


 

                                                                                                      

 

      

 

                                   

 

 


TYPO 18