Penitencial / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Penitential

The gentleman with a scarlet tunic, the same as his martyr effigy, aspires to entertain himself from anger by playing with a glove.
     In secret he hears the call of a total will and presumes the end of his greatness, oblivion in the naked crypt, save for the tapestry of a spider dejected in the calculation of eternity. One evening he has received, from a blind monk, a laughable crown of straw.
     The gentleman sets forth to meet with the prior of an austere religion and proposes to him the restlessness, the desire for withdrawal. Adversaries delight in spreading fallacious rumors and bring him back to the polemic of the world.
     Women and children lament the death of the inimitable gentleman on the morning of a day foretold, they censure the success of the pusillanimous squad and kiss the ground to divert the furies of vengeance. The black sky, mortified, oppresses the city and occasionally lets loose a warm rain.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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