La deriva / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Drifting

I was distinguishing, from the galley, the seven chambered mausoleum, dedicated to a legendary dynasty and built on a break in a mountain. The sailors were secretly talking about the pulverized remains and pointing out the vestiges of disappeared towns on certain steps along the shore.
     The horizontal sun was penetrating the windows of a hulk, in the form of a pyramid, divided into gradual plateaus. Beneath the galley ran a sudden spasm of the waters. We attributed it to the irruption of a burst whose origin we ignored.
     A corpulent fish was threatening us at a short distance, abandoned to the mercy of the waves. We were designating it with the name of a marine beast, mentioned in a prophet’s delirium.
     One of our own, accustomed to the navigation of a lazy river and to the fire of a torrid climate, was intermittently blowing his bronze horn.
     Not a single human creature was seen on the arid cliffs.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




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