Cruz María Salmerón Acosta was born in El Guarataro de Manicuare on January 3, 1892 and died on July 30, 1929. Her primary studies are done in Manicuare, later she goes to the Pedro Luis Cedeño School, in the Toporo district of Cumaná, currently called Cedeño street. She attended the secondary school in the Federal High School, in charge of Silverio González. He obtained his bachelor's degree in 1910. When he was 18 years old, he went to the Central University of Venezuela to study law. Once in the capital, Cruz María is staying in a student residence. With him two companions, one of these is his friend Ramos Sucre, who is a promotion partner.
Known as "the poet of martyrdom" and "The loner of the top of Manicuare", in 1911 he wrote his first poem dedicated to his inseparable friend, the also poet, José Antonio Ramos Sucre. Here is the poem,
HEAVEN AND SEA
In this panorama that design
for tormenting my bad hours,
the sky says of illusion and finery,
the sea runs of hope and dream.
The wandering dragonfly of my dream
opens the transparency of its wings,
with the honey kiss you give me
to the caress of your laughing love.
When the last cloudscape is extinguished,
I copy in my soul the soul of the landscape
dreamy blue and green of longing;
And I think with dark pessimism,
that my illusion is over an abyss
and near another abyss my hope.
Cruz María Salmerón Acosta suffered the hardship of a terrible disease, Hansen's disease or leprosy, which affected her life from early childhood, a disease that was diagnosed in 1920. Being a leper in those days was exposing oneself to the most absolute contempt for fear of contagion .
The poet lived a voluntary isolation in the desolate beach of Manicuare. There he took refuge in a small house built on top of a hill, where he spent the last ten years of his life. The room, with a simple bed, also had a concrete bathtub so that the poet could bathe when the disability prevented him from doing it in the waters of the sea. There, prostrate, unable to get out of bed, he wrote, he said, beautiful poems that go from the most intense and sublime love to the deepest sadness and loneliness.
Curious facts during the life and death of Cruz Salmeron Acosta:
For the year of 1923 another Cumanian poet returns to his homeland back from Madrid. This is Andrés Eloy Blanco (poet and politician Sucrense), who arrives triumphant with his song to Spain on a ship that approaches the Gulf of Cariaco. From his solitary bank, Cruz Salmerón declaims him the poem Bienvenida, which he writes and sends it to a local fisherman. Here is that poem:
WELCOME
A poor poet who almost does not exist,
of those who have remained, as you said yesterday,
here with his sores, which God does not forget,
always perfumed with flower of poetry
a tender and naive greeting sends you
that for being so sad it seems a goodbye.
From my gloomy and eternal retirement
this afternoon, the ship where you travel, I look,
and I suffer watching you as I pass by,
I want and I can not give a few pats
with my painful mutilated hands
that even the pen can not wield.
I do not know why, seeing your ship, I thought
on the ship where I was overwhelmed
of the same penalty that he must suffer
the one that has been fired forever
of all the things that you have most wanted
with an infinite longing to die.
You will not believe that, as long as your ship to the gulf enters
here on the north shore is located
a bard who regrets not being
with the noble people who are going to greet you today,
to the people also cheer you
with the voice that you will never hear.
While your verses my muse sings to you
the complaint that sometimes goes up my throat
with a smile I manage to contain;
and my heart beats so hard,
that scares me, because I guess
that inside my chest I will break.
I would have loved, today in my isolation,
to do, forgetting the grief I feel,
what the nightingale does in its closing,
that despite his craving for space and foliage
trina as happy as in the branches
that he heard his first love songs.
You arrive at your crib when the day dies
and the time of poetry is born
when the cross weighs us most of the duel
and pretend the sad star of the afternoon,
in heaven, a funeral candle that burns,
and the agonizing sun sends its light.
How I now evoke your great Song to Spain
what a poetic beauty it entails!
I feel, evoking it, the inner enjoyment
that sits before a smiling meadow
where there are butterflies, and everywhere
A bird flies and becomes a flower.
In it the stanzas look like diamonds
and they pretend the beautiful verses changing,
and the whole poem looks like a joyel.
They do not have the richest pearls gleams,
nor do they paint landscapes with more beautiful flowers,
the light that on the canvas spills the brush.
Poet: your memory will be eternal.
Larger laurels reserve the glory
to crown you. See them in pos
while I stay here with the soul
already without illusions and a single palm
the one that gives the martyrs the hand of God.
During the month of July of the year 1929, Manicuare lived a great drought, and in painful agony he closed the bitterness, quenched their thirst and made them think again of hope. Saying the following song they say that a confusion with the singing that always sang "Blue":
"Do not ever leave this town,
do not blaspheme, do not deny God,
tomorrow when I get to heaven
I'm going to send you plenty of water. "
To culminate the poem or most famous song of this poet who repeated so much in his imprisonment remembering his love:
BLUE
Blue of that summit so far away
towards which my thought flies
under the blue peace of the morning,
Color that reveals me so many things!
Blue that of the blue of the sky emanates,
and blue of this great sea that comforts me,
while I see in it the vain illusion
of the vision of the wing of a candle
Blue of the landscapes of April,
sad blue of my lyrical reveries,
that I am soothed by intimate bores.
You only distress me when I suffer cravings
of kissing the blue of those eyes
that they will never contemplate mine again.
Reference
https://www.turismosucre.com.ve/personajes/escritores/cruzsalmeronacosta/
http://joldan.arrakis.es/salmeron.htm
http://www.sucreturistico.com/cruzsalmeron.htm