El rescate / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Rescue

     The elves would visit the moon at will and entertained the gaze of the peasants, at such a great distance, with the simulacra of a terrified rabbit.

     The willful elves would torment the peasants and their farm animals and they would cover the furnishings with rust. They had been released, a century earlier, from the magistery of Paracelsus.

     The unfaithful elves had divulged to the four winds a gallant error of Queen Mab and would point out her illicit favors in dealings with Ariel. The offense directed at the queen afflicts Shakespeare’s indulgent soul and influences his precocious death.

     I perceived the temperament of the peasants as I was convalescing from a fever in their vicinity. I was serving as a pedant in a trivial theater.

     The most credulous of them solicited my advice in a frightful case. He asked me if he should retain as a captive the master of the futile elves, who had been caught in a wolf trap and was notable for his bisulcate feet or if he should forgive him in exchange for a sum of rubies.

     He paid no attention to my sentence of holding him and alternating asperity with gracefulness and he received a risible prize.

     Plinius refers to the precious stones originating from the abject residue of the lynx.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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