La isla de las madréporas / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Island of the Madrepores

The savages look at a grimace on the face of the moon. They fill with fear and impute the nocturnal ogre with some offense inflicted upon the maligned star.
     They felt its rotund steps during sleep. It must have leaned at that moment its dissimilar height on a lance pulled from the forest.
     The most dashing of the young men disposes to go out in demand of the whale. The companions celebrate his hunter’s exploits, his impassivity in scaling mountains and bring forth his genealogy of carnivorous vulture.
     A lament from the forest was advising against the young commander’s enterprise and it sounded more strongly when he departed in his ship of Spartan sails.
     The companions were following him crestfallen and would frequently make mistakes in the maneuvering.
     The young hunter, the hope of a natural society, sights an appalling fish and he follows it passionately. The companions complain about the unsuccessful hunt and propose a return.
     The young leader loses control of himself and directly solicits his own ruin. He is tangled in the harpoon’s rope and launches it consuming his arm’s effort.
     The wounded fish drags him into the abyss of the waters and a whirlwind of seagulls marks, for days on end, the place of the incident.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




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