El insomne / Vicente Gerbasi

The Insomniac
Vicente Gerbasi (Canoabo, 1913 - Caracas, 1992)

To Francisco Pérez Perdomo


The insomniac doesn’t rest.
He closes his eyes
and keeps seeing a specter

that passes through the wall

and comes back when the lamp

turns on, opaque,

from the dead.

The insomniac touches the wood

on the bed, cold,

and he feels like he’s sleeping

in the coffin.

The insomniac opens his eyes

and sees the specter again

crossing through the wall

with his scarred head.

The insomniac places the scarred head

in place of his own head

and begins to scream,

but he doesn’t scream

because no one hears him.

The insomniac screams, screams,

but no one hears him.

The insomniac floats

in the silence of the Universe.

1989

Antología poética (Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1990)

Mi padre, el inmigrante: XIII / Vicente Gerbasi

My Father, the Immigrant: XIII
Vicente Gerbasi (Canoabo, 1913-Caracas, 1992)


Who calls me, who lights up leopard eyes
in the tamarind night?
The guitars quiet down to the mysterious blowing of death,
and the voices hush, and only the kids stay up late.
They are the inhabitants of the night,
when silence spreads throughout the stars,
and the domestic animal moves through the corridors,
and the nocturnal birds visit the village church,
where all the dead pass,
where bloodied saints live.
Through the shadows the headless horses run,
and the sands of the street reach the edges,
where fear gathers its animals of fire.
And it’s the night that shelters existence alone,
in the insomniac child, in the tired ox,
in the curve of the hills, in the radiances
of the rocks and the fern trees facing the stars,
in the mystery where I listen to you,
like a vast solitude of my heart.
My father, father of my shadows.
And of my poetry.


1945




Vicente Gerbasi, "Mi padre, el inmigrante," Antología poética (Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1990)