Prelude

José Antonio Ramos Sucre (Cumaná, Venezuela 1890 - Geneva, Switzerland 1930)



     I want to exist amid empty darkness, because the world damages my senses cruelly and life afflicts me, impertinent lover whispering bitter stories.
     By then my memories will have abandoned me: now they flee and return with a rhythm of ceaseless waves, they are wolves howling in the night shrouding desert snows.
     Reality’s disturbed symbol, movement respects my fantastic asylum; moreover, I will have scaled it with death at my arm. She is a white Beatrice, and, standing on the crescent of the moon, she will visit my painful sea. Under her spell I will repose forever and I will no longer lament offended beauty or impossible love.




La torre de Timón, 1925




(José Antonio Ramos Sucre, "Preludio," Antología poética, ed. Francisco Pérez Perdomo, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1969)