El peregrino ferviente / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Fervent Pilgrim

     I was peacefully suffering the displeasure of the freezing skies. A livid splendor, the stray sun, was being born under the horizon and illuminating the glacial city. The water of the meteors was blackening the monumental houses.

     A reflective monk, possessed by arrogance, knew the secrets of mechanics and of natural magic. The head of an automaton announced the future and I consulted it without remorse.

     That day I received a punishment of arcane origin. You were passing from this life hidden from me and without hope. I came to lose myself in the shade and in the dust of a fragile palace, I followed the errors of a blind ghost, of an effigy glimpsed under the tenuous gauze of Eurydice, and I returned to the same plaza of entry, after a febrile round.

     I began the return to my homeland amidst the rumor of an immense misfortune. The men were deserting the cities, fleeing from the plague and from the derision of fear. The fires of the rich mansions were numbing the condemned wolf.

     Some virgins of your friendship, inspired by the example of your virtue and dressed in the attire of the blind ghost, of the aerial shade, set me on the path to the place of your sepulcher, they brought me to my knees at the foot of your alabaster image.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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