Los lazos de la quimera / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Chimera’s Ties

I was keeping a vigil in the crisis of nocturnal solitude. The portrait of an ideal woman, the only treasure in the lodgings, was extending my frown, occasionally entertaining my anxiety.
     I had found it at the auction of some genteel furniture. The nuance of the hair reminded me of a gracile beauty, phantasm of oblivion. A dreamer’s paintbrush had uselessly persisted in imitating it.
     I was making an effort to discover the enigma of a singular discipline, of a secret art, and I was drawing, without realizing it, the figure of inedited quantities.
     I have exhausted myself to the point of sinking into drowsiness, beneath the fingers of a cold marble hand.
     I awoke in a funeral parlor and wandered through all of it, sidestepping the stone urns. On the plinth of an image of eternity, blinded by a veil, I found the residue of Juliet’s poison.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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