La procesión / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Procession

I was encircling the lowlands of the immemorial city in search of wonders. I had received from a gardener the chimerical blue flower.
     An old man approached me to guide my steps. He was preceding me with a sword in his hand and on one finger he was bearing the pontifical amethyst. The old man had frightened off Attila from his journey, appearing to him in dreams.
     He addressed the seven thousand statues of a marble basilica and they came down from their socles and followed us through the deserted streets. The statues represented the troubadour, the gentleman and the monk, the most distinguished exemplars of the Middle Ages.
     A few invisible bells disseminated the hour of the Angelus to the glacial sound of a harmonica.
     The old man and the crowd of eternal characters accompanied me to the countryside and turned back away from me when the deep stars were imitating a trail of pearls on black velvet, suggesting an image of the lavish Venetian paintbrush. They drifted off elevating a radiant canticle.
     I fell on my knees in the docile grass, praying a tercet in praise of Beatrice, and an exiled centaur passed by galloping in the night of uncertainty.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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