El castigo / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Punishment

The visionary would teach me numeration using a tree of incalculable leaves. He proceeded to initiate me in the figures and volumes pointing out the example of the crystal and the proportion held between the parts of a flower. He would discover an atom of the insinuating light in the dark body.
     The visionary would disappear in a skiff of superficial capacity when dusk fell. It created the illusion of foundering at an ambiguous distance, amidst a tumult of waves. I would watch the relics of his garb and his cypress crown floating.
     He would return the next day hidden from me, wearing the same solemn gown of a Hebrew priest, according to the ritual of Moses.
     At the time he was commenting the passage on a parchment scroll, written without vowels. The cover showed the image of the lycaeon, the African wolf. He would conclude by citing the name of the vengeful prophets and loosening onto the morning’s face a grandiose hymn that would exhaust the torrent of his voice.
     I stopped seeing him when he began to speak recklessly, across free space, with a magnetic star.
     The rotunda, where he had taken shelter, fell to the ground suddenly, surrounded by splendid flames.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }