Los paladines / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Paladins

     The knights, subject to a difficult vote, had built a round church, recalling the Holy Sepulcher.

     They lived in a space oppressed by the low sky, of dead colors, and embraced tribulation and kept a fast.

     They would equip themselves for the labors and dangers of the militia by means of inexorable penitences and stare at the inanity of glory in the image of the lizard amid the ruins, painted on the cheek of a scrawny head. They wouldn’t train for the chance of hostilities using with the simple animals the artifice and detour of the hunt, in which the ancients saw the simulacrum of war.

     They would despoil themselves of severity to celebrate the birth of the Savior and amuse themselves with the apology of the ass, a cheerful ceremony, and choosing as their own sovereign, for that day, the most beautiful girl from the place, who was prepared to wage her authority for charitable ends.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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