Elaina / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Elaina

The virgin sleeps the invariable sleep in her glass coffin. A stone lamp illuminates the low relief of the passion in the nocturnal church. The trickle of the rain divides the roof tiles and disseminates a frail brush on the walls.
     The virgin sits up from where she lies, in the days of portents and threats. Her incoherent voice has revealed the wonders of another century, of the supernatural world, the relief of the souls of purgatory on Good Friday.
     The natives don’t dare deposit her in the heart of the Earth and admire how she passed from a happy youth to self-absorbed thought, to a mortal and conflicted affect. The mystical doctrine doesn’t consent to the excessive affliction toward creatures.
     The virgin of sleep suffers with the worries of those in love and she straightens them out on the path of remedy. I was living consumed by desperation and came across solace by staying on my knees at the foot of the glass coffin.
     I didn’t know about the virgin of sleep nor of that manner of health during the withered year’s days of rain, when the clouds would throw a cold gauze on the mountains. I discovered the church of the miracle and saw in the prostrated and humble attitude a requisite for finding jubilation, when the dawn of spring broke and within view of a message from the fairy swallow.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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