La canonesa / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Canoness

I visited the city of penumbra and of freezing colors and annoyance and melancholy ensued to hinder my will.
     The sun from a month of rain was provoking the full moon spell in the mirror of the glacial floor. I went out to amuse my sight through the streets and plazas and asked the name of the statues dressed in ivy. Prelates and gentlemen, from the lofty plinths, infused the nostalgia of the armed centuries of an Episcopal republic.
     A sculpted and chiseled church was imitating the one for St. Sebald in ancient Nuremberg. The images on the door reproduced the countenance of the eagle, of the lion and the ox.
     The natives worked very hard in the fabrication of infant toys, angelic theorbos, psalteries and lutes. A maiden separated me from the reverence towards archaic monuments, she granted me the privilege of her friendship and wine while referring me to her somber life, an example of simplicity and sacrifice. She was offering her youth to the memory of a brother deceased before his time and was replacing him, keeping herself pure and celibate, in the council of a military order.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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