Sueño 1

The dead of night was nearly over, gone,
the darkness diminishing, when,
exhausted by daily chores—
and not just oppressed
by the ponderous toil
of manual labour, but tired
of delight, too (which, as another
stimulus for the senses, also tires,
even if pleasantly,
because Nature always alternates
the balance of her scales,
now one, now the other,
distributing various activities,
now leisure, now gainful work,
according to her unruly rules, which govern
the world’s spectacular machinery)—
so, then, the limbs occupied
with deep, sweet sleep,
the senses were left with that
which activity renders ordinary—
work, essentially, but well-loved work,
if work can be pleasant—
if not deprived, at least suspended
and yielding to the portrait
of life’s opposite, which—slowly assembled—
with weapons of slumber,
gutlessly attacks and lazily quells all,
from the humble shepherd to the high sceptre,
without distinguishing sackcloth
from king’s silk,
for its spirit level, all powerful,
grants no favours
to anyone:
from he whose sovereign tiara is from
three crowns formed,
to the one who lives in a lowly straw hut;
from he who the winding Danube gilds,
to the one who lives humbly
beneath humble reeds;
with yardstick unchanging
(like, in effect, a powerful image
of death), Morpheus
equates flax with brocade.
                             The soul, then, suspended
from external government—through which, occupied
by material employment,
it deems the day was well or poorly spent—
only administers, remotely,
if not completely separated from,
the oppressively temporary death of those
languid limbs and quietened bones,
the perks of vegetative warmth,
the body being, in peaceful quiet,
a corpse with a soul,
dead to life and in death alive,
sluggish signals indicating the latter,
the human clock,
vital conductor that, if not with the hand
then with arterial concert, a few small,
pulsing signs, slowly reveals
its well-regulated movement.
                             This, then, sovereign organ and living
centre of vital spirits,
with your breathing, bellowing partner—
the lung, which attracts like a wind magnet,
which, in movements never uneven,
compressing now, dilating now,
the throat’s muscular softness,
allows the resonance wherein
fresh air’s circumscribed from outside
and expelled already warm,
which avenges its expulsion with
little thefts of body heat,
briefly mourned,
never retrieved
(if now they aren’t perceived, when repeated
they show that no theft is small)—
these, then, in sum, as I’ve already said,
both faithful witnesses, exceptional,
assured that life went on,
while the senses challenged
that assurance with silence
—their mute voices implying refutation—
and the tongue, clumsy, silenced by sleep,
not able to speak, denied them.