CELEBRATION OF THE COLOR BLACK
The light shines, celebrating the purity of the color black:
jet stone black,
black eel,
black that celebrates the snout of the pig in the woods.
The cricket sings it
motionless and proud
under its hard stone.
The black space where my heart beats:
feather foam
where I am overflowing endurance,
slow stir of air and emotions.
The jervedor
loves the intensity of her black feathers:
a pure form
of unshaded light.
She who lays the coitora bird in intricate nest.
The deep black
from which hang galaxies,
ornaments
in the hair
of an invisible woman.
MANGO TREE
“That thou mayest possess all things,
seek to possess nothing.”
Saint John of the Cross
The mango tree
is immortal
and does not need the human.
It forms clear shadows
in the dense bush
and remains.
The palm
can hold the world,
but the mango
has accepted
the dark call of goodness.
Because it did not want to have
something in nothing
it is gone:
beyond the blue dunes,
among the arbutus and cherry pick,
black-thorned.
There,
where two rivers meet-
faces of lonesomeness.
THE CENTAUR
Tied to a rope
I took the centaur
to the back
shed of the house.
You were the wise
teacher of Achilles
and Asclepius
and with one blow
I cut his head
placing on it
a trunk
with its muzzles.
I whispered in his ear:
the plains are the void
where the horse
is all that exists.
They will come,
mere riders,
to steal
your transcendence.
In the end
expect sadness,
evil
and defeat.
*Apure, 1952
THESE HERONS
In memory of
Natalio José Estrada.
These herons
must be Castilian
because they form a V when they fly.
Below
rivers are dammed
and are becoming wider.
Two manatees emerge
and blow faint jets of whitish vapor.
The old house on the port:
hinges, brass locks.
In the constellated meander of one of its rooms
the black nipples of a woman.
The dome
of the church.
In a niche of the facade,
the helmeted warrior
aks those already fallen into the hollow:
Who but God? Who but God?
Who but God?
And beyond the plains,
dust in wind ‘hind travelers
and livestock,
and after them, the heart’s late yearning.
Let the wind of language blow strong
so that these birds can fly far.
THE NATURE OF EXILE
Cattle came from the wooded longing
of longed-for fetters.
What sense had those animals
with human faces?
The kitchen was a bonfire
at midnight.
The vegetable
silence of the vegetable
where the ferns
flap like hawk moth.
What of the stillness of places
I knew so well?
I did not find the constellated neighborhood,
or the blue shirt.
It was the nature of exile,
a river of nothing.
Something cutting an onion into small pieces,
white, like a lamp under a withered tree.
a new venezuelan poetry 