La sirte / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Shoal

     Ariel had taken refuge in an acanthus of the Corinthian capital. An architect, grateful to the seductions and memories of Italy, had erected a palace of reliable lines and classical inspiration.

     The king had given it as a present to the astronomer of his court, versed in the predictions of the spheres. In front of the palace, edified on a desert island, the ecstatic sea stretched out. A wandering soul had preferred that panorama to the celestial venture. The fishermen referred to this legend and to the one of the nocturnal hunter, sentenced to pursue an unreachable prey until the universe’s final cataclysm.

     That astronomer had blinded the king’s understanding and was assiduously animating him against his family. He denied the nation the avenues of the throne.

     He shrouded the kingdom in an untimely war and promised brilliant fortunes, reserved in the ground, to outfit a conquering armada.

     Fate silently prepared an abyss for the projects of grandeur and the ships were dispersed, as a consequence of a greater fear, on the day of the battle.

     That moment occasioned the disappearance of the pernicious councilor.

     The island of his domicile sank a few feet beneath the surface of the sea and became a reef hostile to navigation.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




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