El jugador / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Player

The stagnant cloud, of black hue, dominates the vista of dregs on the ground and the decorticated mountain.
     A character wanders the taciturn area. His horse, of humble nape, blows the dust on the ground.
     The character must play even in the scaffold, in accordance with the threat of a lugubrious cartomancy. He has reconciled his fate by means of a false card, where he sees his portrait stamped.
     The character rides on horseback to his ruined house, once he distinguishes the jovial mask of the cornice. He places in the hands of a woman the fistfull of shining sequins and surrenders to funereal beauty and the astute discourse.
     The woman, of a nomadic and exterminated race, witnesses from a terrace, on the following morning, the foreseen torment and hangs a message from the neck of the national ibis.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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