El olvido / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Oblivion

I didn’t step in the tracks of the extravagant hunter. I wanted to avoid the contagion of his grief.
     We lived as neighbors in a country of august beauty. The sulfur and other preferred fire fossils would gather in the composition of the earth.
     The hunter frequented the granite peaks. His brave gesture was drawn in the zone of candid ether. A fugitive light directed his steps.
     He had domesticated the oldest among the sudden chamois. He was accurate with the object of his shots as he turned his back to them.
     I only approached him once, in order to find the motive for his detour.
     The grave manner of his discourse kept me from collecting a glimmer.
     He had built his cabin in the shadow of a glacial pine tree.
     I went there furtively once I noticed he had been absent for a week. The hunter, free from the deleterious effects of death, was lying in a stone coffin. The frozen face, alien to sorrow, did not inspire conjectures as to the cause of death. A trail of magnetic carbuncles had fallen from his sides.
     A torrent, created by the fortuitous rain, throws a sediment of sand onto the cabin and promises to blind it.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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