El alumno de Tersites / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Thersites’s Student

I had interned myself in the jungle of sedative shadows, where according to tradition the equestrian god of sunset would rest. He was a Sagittarian retired from the world and removed from happiness and because of that he received the punishment of an anticipated death. The numen of light mourned him continuously and entrusted him with the day’s ambiguous hour.
     His beloved had received the favor of immortality and was wandering the paths and crossing the mountain’s depths, where the same hour reigned perpetually, in sight of the violet colored clouds.
     A supreme thought had made her mute.
     The thicket was making a carpet at her feet and the trees, dreaming with the glowing midday, were throwing a rain of martyred flowers on her head.
     I had interned myself in the wild solitude, taking as a companion the jester exiled from the court. He spoke his repartee in the form of an argument, cheerfully parodying scholars and doctors. Shakespeare curses him in one of his dramas. He had incurred, out of imprudence, the anger of a venerable king and his daughters.
     The jester spoke, with festive tone, to the woman of the forest in question, elevated to the same privilege as divine people, of treading the earth with naked and unharmed feet.
     The enraptured forest suddenly became a stony ground and the lightning’s whip lashed the fig trees condemned to sterility.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




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