El ciego infalible / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Infallible Blind Man

     The indifferent page proclaims from a raft the countryside cereals. He negotiates the narrowness and vortex of the sedentary river. A rice paper hat defends his smooth, sculptural person.

     An old man with empty eyes executes a desolate music on his bamboo shepherd’s flute. He lives off alms at the entrance of my lacquer and porcelain trinkets store. At one point he refers to his captivity in the hideout of some highway robbers embittered by his sight, distrustful of his practice of the terrain.

     I exercise the even business of a shopkeeper in a withered city. I attain no amusement save the death of a beggar on the street and the cremation of his cadaver amidst a racket of scamps or otherwise the torture of a parricide sagaciously crushed and quartered by the executioner.

     The page owes me his rearing. I saved him from succumbing amid some ruins, during a war with the pirates of Europe. The invader’s arms devastated the marble bridge of a metropolis and printed the dye of charcoal and soot on the effigies of some decorative lions. I discovered the infant in a wicker basket, abandoned by his servers in an orchard of camellias and hydrangeas. The smoke from the battle was offending the lofty wisteria, of aerial garland, with a blue flower.

     The old man with the empty eyes encourages my hope in the effects of good and promises me fortune’s grace. He ignores my diligence in defending a privileged child.

     I have followed the conduct of a fisherman in an honest episode and I imagine the visit of a princess with an ivory semblance, afflicted by the loss of a son. Her faculties should rescue me from penury.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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