El capricornio / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Capricorn

We set the campaign tent in the sandy ground, invaded by the water of a mild rain. We were living on arms with the goal of eluding the surprise of some horsemen of a beardless race.
     Some birds with fiery pupils, metamorphosis of heartless wolves, were disrupting the secret darkness. A tremulous lake was gathering in its basin the glimmer of a versatile sky.
     We were humbly suffering the penury of the climate. We brought down a goat, the first of a wild troupe, and limited ourselves to its rebel, coriaceous viands. The horns were repeating the precise spirals of the Capricorn in the wheel of zodiac.
     Plutarch, eminent figure from a decadent century, cites the clumsy reveries, derived from sinister delicacies, and persists in reproving the head of the polyp.
     The horsemen had directed the fatal herd in pursuit of us. Hoping for the squandering of our gunpowder, they invented the magisterial ruse of placing it within our reach. From whence came the capture and use of the infamous beast and the dance of lubricious forms in dinner’s repose.
     We erroneously fired the rifles on the derision of the senses. Some cats with maimed ears were cavorting, in resemblance of the inebriated satyrs of a Rubens, in the heart of a poisonous flame.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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