Man's poetry, individually speaking, reveals unknown and uncertain worlds. Intrinsic to each of the minds that have the capacity to imagine. Feelings are deities that reign over sumptuous kingdoms that rule with romanticism, death, magic, pride, tragedy, joy and esotericism. In this article we will review the life and work of a king who was commanded by a deity of occult nature. This man taught us through masterful poetic lyrics cabalistic worlds, episodes of spells, places seen through a tangible window and profane thresholds. A man who, fighting against those unscathed beings of the night, brought us both fantastic and intriguing mythology.

Francisco Pérez Perdomo was a poet of the nocturnal and the dreamlike. Born in 1930 in Sabana Libre, Trujillo state, Venezuela. Previously there was a mistake about his birthplace and it was said that he was born in Boconó, but Pérez Perdomo himself clarified this confusion in an interview in 1985, since, a few days after he was born, his family moved to Boconó, and he lived there all his childhood and part of his adolescence. Son number four of eight. A admirer of fine arts since he was very young, especially in opera.

At the end of the 4th year of high school he moved to Caracas, since, at that time, high schools in the interior of the country only gave classes until that year, and to finish high school, they had to proceed in the capital. There he met his friends and colleagues Adriano González León, Guillermo Sucre, Salvador Garmendia, Luis García Morales and Elisa Lerner; with whom he founded the projects Sardio and El Techo de la Ballena, literary groups where Perdomo and his companions published their works for distribution.

After finishing high school, the future poet enters the Central University of Venezuela, where he studied two careers and at the same time worked as a civil servant in the Ministry of Justice. After a while, he dropped out of the Bachelor of Arts because he could not sustain his studies and employment. In 1957 he graduated as a lawyer, a title he practiced for ten years, but the conflicts brought about by his vocation led him to abandon Law.

Before talking about his collections of poems, I would like to emphasize his literary influences. It was not strange for me to know that one of his greatest masters, who only knew and learned from him through his letters, was nothing more and nothing less than the Cumanense José Antonio Ramos Sucre , considered a "rare writer" by his literature incatalogable and rigorous study. Pérez Perdomo uses this influence by showing us a prosaic poetry bathed in surrealist metaphors, which in turn uses the "I" as the only subjective entity present before every event and floating feeling.

His first book of poems Ghosts and diseases (1961), is a clear example and the beginning of his phantasmagoric mythology. It was published under the label Sardio and in it, we can enjoy different stories about ghosts, spectres that transgress dreams turning them into nightmares. His contiguous works Faithful Poisons (1963) and Depravity of the Astros (1966) continue with this background theme, dressing them with black humor and everyday themes of man. Another of the things that has also powerfully influenced Pérez Perdomo is his childhood in Boconó, a city located in a region full of ghost stories, witches, appearances and inexplicable events of the supernatural. His verses fluidly denote the presence of these stories.

The man looked at the immensity. │ From those crepuscular ruins │ came some screams │ strange and wailing. │Como grey rays among the dust │ the lizards crawled.

The poem. From the bottom of the chaos they called it

In his works we will always find this type of stories, told by a narrator contemplating a surprising and supernatural event, or simply relating some common event that harbours grace. In 1966, the writer of the gloomy won the Biennial Prize José Rafael Pocaterra for his collection of poems Depravation of the Astros. His first collections of poems were the precursors of all the poetry that Pérez Perdomo would create at that time onwards, those that would fundamentally impart the aesthetics of that country he wanted to reveal to us, making it dreamlike, fantastic, full of cabalistic rituals, nocturnal gods, spectres, etcetera. For this enigmatic poet, the struggle with his spirits never ended, and he always took them with him until the end of his thirty-year literary career.

Dentro de lo perceptible se encuentra una voz que atestigua cosas inexplicables, una voz que siente y que a veces se quiebra. Una voz que busca y está al tanto de todo aquello que lo asombra, contemplándolo bajo los límites de su comprensión. Viendo lo intangible desde una ventana describiendo todo lo que sucede. Así son los personajes de Pérez Perdomo, el mismo poeta viviendo tales situaciones. Aquél que empíricamente vivió con lo desconocido y trata de estructurarlo magistralmente, con todo el sosiego que dirigió sus plumas.

I reclined my head, looked down at the ground, deep, and again from below I was caught up in the abrupt darkness.

From the poem. Given the sudden darkness

And with this fragment quoted from one of the author's poems, we honor his death, which was on a Sunday, May 26, 2013 in the city of Caracas. Seven years after his physical disappearance. Francisco Pérez Perdomo left us with magic letters a way of making poetry, transporting with delicious delirium the minds hungriest of curiosity, devouring beauty. His legacy is an inspiration for authors who transform metaphor into art, pupils who look for masters like him.

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