Los gallos de la noche de Elsinor / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Roosters of the Elsinore Night

The mist from the canal was rising to envelop the wilted gardens. The lanterns, with damp glass, gave off a fatuous light during the day, of alchemy.
     The wan girl had cultivated my attention when she leaned out the window for the purpose of discovering the hour in the plaza clock. Time and inclemency had tarnished the sphere and darkened the Roman numeral, more suited for a memorial stone.
     We spoke in the shadows of her parents and guardians. She would present herself faithfully at the window to inquire the hour itself in the decrepit clock and would scrupulously announce it with its trail of minutes and seconds.
     She promised to accompany me through life, fleeing with me, in favor of the dead of night, on my horse’s hindquarters.
     I facilitated an exit to the street for her, breaking the window’s archaic bars. She appeared wrapped in the plaintive linen of Eurydice.
     My horse carried us off in a blind run, threw me onto the earth and dragged me a long distance on the ground. My foot had been caught in the stirrup’s belt.
     He slowed down and returned to his natural meekness, when the proclamation of the roosters removed from my company the vain simulacrum of the woman.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




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