Varamo concerns a day in the life of a hapless government employee. After being paid by the ministry in counterfeit money, our unfortunate bureaucrat, Varamo, wanders around all night, then sits down and writes the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy. What is odd is that Varamo, at fifty years old, "hadn't previously written one sole verse, nor had it ever occurred to him to write one".