La presea / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Jewel

     The magistrature and the nobility were quarreling continuously in the forum of the free city. They would gather in the habit of irritating with tributes and slander the villains of the environs, hurling them to desperation.

     I lived far from the hostilities and in the presence of a discursive monk, my counselor in matters of courtesy. He would point out for me, in more than one sensible passage from the Gospel, the clement smile of the Virgin Mary and would invite me to think of the tribulations of Blancaflor, sold to the pirates. An act from my childhood was enough for the perennial jubilation of his life.

     The nobles had dismissed an intransigent judge and were parading him around in a cart pulled by cows, amidst the clamor of the throng. His daughter then moved to rescue him, without any other authority besides that of her innocence and astride an impulsive horse. She divided and dispersed, by merely announcing herself, the tumult of the unworthy.

     I gathered in my hands a flower that fell from her hair.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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