El hijo del anciano / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Old Man’s Son

     A few burin lines would be enough for the likeness of the elemental landscape.
     Some lean tree, stick skeleton, sign of honor, was living on the burnt ground.
     Black mountains, of a translucent profile, were enclosing the valley.
     My house would disappear, at the end of an uncertain day, amid the inundation of the fluid night.
     The subterranean noises would last until the advent of the delayed sun. Superhuman forces were removing the stone from the sepulchers.
     I was dividing the uniform life between reading epics and tragedies and the habits of an unsettled youth.
     I conceived the image of an infanta, threatened by the silentiaries in the palace of fear. I would only kiss the fringe of her mantle on my knees.
     One day I ventured to the pastime of hunting on a venerated day, notwithstanding the warnings of my progenitor. The old man of the infallible sayings, an aficionado of narration, would rest in a majestic chair of primitive art.
     An invisible trumpet, lost in the mountain, strayed the dogs of my pack.
     After a fruitless day, I penetrated to rest in the chamber of an illusory home. The chimeras surged gently from the darkness of my drowsiness. I thought I was visiting the palace of fear, where the infanta of my passion was confronting, in punishment, the trance of death. The ministers and servants were warning and imposing the secret. The exhausted lamps were releasing long hairs of smoke in the hall covered in black cloth.
     I awoke, close to morning, in the middle of the countryside.
     My head was resting on a stone. My hair was humid with dew and, on my face, the light of a diluted moon.




La torre de Timón (1925)




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