Montería / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Hunting

I had fatigued myself running after the wild sheep.
     I had to alleviate my thirst in a well of salubrious water. I hoped to reestablish myself there from having been rammed. The salt had crystallized on the edges, in the form of nacre.
     The young men of my age had likewise been mistreated when they chased those irreducible animals. None had been victimized or caught in a trap. They were assigned a tenacious life.
     I concealed the damage received in the course of the hunt and didn’t refer it to my companions. I gathered myself in my country estate when the afternoon fell and hoped to wrap myself in the smoke of a juniper bonfire. I singularly enjoyed that perfumed firewood and had gathered a sheaf of its branches when I returned from the hazardous incursion.
     The aroma exhaled from the fire inspired in me a dominant intoxication and opened in my presence an avenue of monumental statues. The stylized heads exactly imitated those of the beasts stolen from my persecution.
     I recognized, disconcerted, a passage from Thebes, the city of a hundred doors.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




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