La sombra de la hija del faraón / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Shadow of the Pharaoh’s Daughter

The vision was displaying the vehement traits of a living being. A vicious pack of hounds was being drawn in the nocturnal secret and was emerging to devour it. Bloody relics remained on the floor and the fierce dogs were leaving the place to some birds with ruby eyes. Dogs of that breed have disappeared from the inhabited world and their descendants, enemies of men, have hidden in the bends and vertices of some hills, with a fleeting resemblance to feudal battlements and towers. A bird, of constant and silent flight, unique in its kind, serves as a lookout and warns them with its sharp voice.
     My eyes opened to dawn when my burning head slipped from its place, on the shattered plinth.
     I had spent the night between the columns of a portico and under a bonfire’s protection. At that moment I was following and censuring the fabulous itineraries of the Greeks. A malignant fate was always directing me toward the remainders of some palace belonging to Cambyses, the sacrilegious king, where insatiable felines dwelled.
     I was able to take up lodgings after an audacious hunt. The dejected and mortally wounded beasts were reproducing the scene of a low relief excepted from the ruins, inspired or drawn by cruel Assyrian ingenuity.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




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