El desahucio / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Eviction

The courtesan had arrived from London and cloaked herself with its fog. She was alone and ill.
     I hurried to defend her from uncertainty and received her in my improvident room. She climbed the staircase leaning on my shoulder.
     I stirred the fire to reestablish her from the chill of the cold. The joy of the flame tinged red the velvet curtains, a residue of my fortune saved from the claws of the creditors.
     She came from the island of meadows, complaining about the shamelessness of the gendarmes and bitterly sobbing when she declared the ruin of her health and prestige.
     She settled in the rosewood bed, enriched by bronze panels and encrusted with silver, in accordance with the style of Pompeii, and got lost amid the sheets abandoning herself to the mercy of her diseases. She could not resist the crowd of her aches.
     I consumed the rest of my assets in her exequies and incinerated her with the artistic furniture, risking the final departure with the gesture of a Sardanapalus.
     I could not pay the rent for the home and threw myself into the street in demand of the dangers of the open air.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




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