Amor cuando yo muera .
Amor, cuando yo muera no te vistas de viuda,
ni llores sacudiéndote como quien estornuda,
ni sufras «pataletas» que al vecindario alarmen,
ni para prevenirlas compres gotas del Carmen.
No te sientes al lado de mi cajón mortuorio
usando a tus cuñadas como reclinatorio;
y cuando alguien, amada, se acerque a darte el pésame,
no te le abras de brazos en actitud de ¡bésame!
Hazte, amada, la sorda cuando algún güelefrito
dictamine, observándome, que he quedado igualito.
Y hazte la que no oye ni comprende ni mira
cuando alguno comente que parece mentira.
Amor, cuando yo muera no te vistas de viuda:
Yo quiero ser un muerto como los de Neruda;
y por lo tanto, amada, no te enlutes ni llores:
¡Eso es para los muertos esülo Julio Florez!
No se te ocurra, amada, formar la gran «llorona»
cada vez que te anuncien que llegó una corona;
pero tampoco vayas a salir de indiscreta
a curiosear el nombre que üene la tarjeta.
No grites, amada, que te lleve conmigo
y que sin mí te quedas como en «Tomo y obligo»,
ni vayas a ponerte, con la voz desgarrada,
a divulgar detalles de mi vida privada.
Amor, cuando yo muera no hagas lo que hacen todas; no copies sus estilos, no repitas sus modas: Que aunque en nieblas de olvido quede mi nombre extinto, ¡sepa al menos el mundo que fui un muerto distinto!
Aqulies Nazoa
My Translation (I tried to ryhming it):
When I die...
Dear, when I die like a widow don't get dress
nor cry shaking like if you were to sneeze
Nor suffer fits that the neighborhood would worry
nor buy snake oil to stop it
Don't sit next to my coffin
nor as a mullet use your cosibs
And when someone, a beloved, come to show their respect
Do not open your arms and pity expect!
And please my beloved, deaf to be pretend
When some jerk says, looking me, that I look the same
And pretend that you don't her nor understand
When someone, saying that must be a lie comments
And please, like a widow don't get dress
because like the ones of Neruda I don't want to be a dead
Thus, my beloved, don't mourn or cry
Because that are the deads of the Julio Florez style!
Do not think, my beloved, crying out loud
Everytime that someone says that has arrived another wreath
and neither go out in an indiscreet way
to see in the card from who is the name
Do not scream, my beloved, "take me with you"
And that without me, you are left by your own
And screaming don't dare to start
telling details of our private lifes
Dear, when I die please do not do what everyone else
Don't copy their style, nor their fashions repeat
Because even when onto the oblivious will fall my extint name
At least the world shall know I was a different kind of dead!
That was a poem from Aquiles Nazoa. I think he was a great Venezuelan poet; he amalgamated social commentary with funny wits, but in my opinion Andrés Eloy Blanco is in a higher level. Why? the answer is that Blanco was more nationalistic on his poems (his poetry is something like trying to emulate Rubén Darío) and is a little bit complicated while Aquiles Nazoa is a language that can be and is for a broader audience because touches things that everyone lives
The problem with Venezuelan literature is that the one considered masterworks are also overly regionalistic and most (if not) all of them were written before 1940's and has since them being mandatory on classrooms since then and I am not saying that is not interesting nor good; but the problem is that a novel about rural Venezuela in the early 1900's doesn't grab your average Venezuelan (80% of Venezuelans lives on urban areas) and the problem is that most of those novels has something what might be called The Barton Fink Syndrome (Written by intelectuals for intelectuals about the common man) counting that in 1930's only 10 porcent of the Venezuelans could read. And that we got tired of hearing the same 3 authors with the same setting) while the rest of the Venezuelan classical literature fall into the oblivion and the new Venezuelan novels are almost always ignored (And half of them were written by college kids trying to be the new Gabriel García Márquez or have the style of The Catcher of The Rye)
If you see the Top Ten of Best-Sellers here you will note that most of them are US books (as most of the continent) and two or three of them are Mexican/Argentinean/Colombian (we sometimes say that when Venezuela separated from Colombia they got the brains, we got the wealth)
The options of the average man are either a nationalistic novel full of XIX century slang you don't understand and references you are supposed (some of them are quite good and interesting, another ones are just unbearables and full of footnotes to the modern reader) to now or lame anthology books with stories written by college kids playing to be great authors (some of them are good, but a lot of them unforntunelly falls in the same level that cheesy teenage goth poetry). Basically, the literature was and is, with some exceptions, something made by intelectuals to intelectuals
I... haven't been practicing my english as I should.