Del suburbio / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

From the Suburb

Misery had reduced us to a basement. I was suffering at each step the censure of my faults.
     I conserve the satisfaction of not having offended my consort or my children when they moaned in the darkness. Vice did not deny me compassion.
     They became ill and died from an indecipherable, torpid sickness. A fever, an effect of unhealthy living, suppressed their sense.
     I have consoled myself recalling the agony of the surviving boy. He imagined with a great deal of vivacity the climate of that day, the first of the year, and pointed out the purple sun and the naked sky. A figure was seducing him from a quick sled, with little silver bells.
     His mother had described for him a similar scene before abandoning him in this world.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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