La ciudad de los espejismos / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The City of Mirages

I cultivate memories of my pensive childhood. An invisible bell tower, lost in darkness, rang the hour to return home, to gather myself in the room.
     Solemn noises interrupted my sleep at each step. I believed I felt the parade of a procession and the rumor of its prayers. It was heading to the tomb of a hero, in a monastery of inflexible brothers, and passing through the street sunken brusquely in the languid river.
     I would get up from where I lay, finding a path between the furniture on the dais, ceremonial hall, and would open the windows in secret. I uselessly insisted on distinguishing the funeral procession. A delirious glimpse wandered the skies.
     I can’t mark the number of times I awoke and sought in vain. I would regain my bedroom in the dark, after reestablishing the order of the gems in the living room. A diabolical insect would provoke my annoyance by hiding swiftly in the thickness of the carpet.
     The ruin of the walls had filled the deserted living room with dust. My grandparents, emphatic and stately, received no other visits besides death.
     I was unable to shed the ghosts of sleep in the course of the vigil. The morning would invade my florid balcony with livid veneers and I would repose my sight on indifferent willows in the distance, in a Shakespearean reverie.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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