Sueño 2

At this near immeasurable elevation,
joyous but astonished,
astonished yet satisfied,
and amazed though satisfied, the supreme
Queen, sovereign of the sublunar,
the perceptive gaze, unfiltered by spectacles,
of her beautiful, intellectual eyes
(without fear of distance
or of opaque, resistant obstructions,
of things concealed by an object’s interposition),
extended freely across all creation:
vast aggregate,
incomprehensible accumulation;
if it seemed to offer signs
of the possible to sight,
to understanding it did not, which—mired
in the excess of objects, and surpassed
by their magnificent power—
cowardly recoiled.
                             In such a way, from that daring attempt,
it revoked its intention, repentant,
her gaze, which attempted in vain
such unrestrained flaunting
against the object whose excellence exceeds
the lines of sight
—against the Sun, I mean, brilliant body
with fiery, punishing rays
of lesser forces despising,
ray after ray punishing
the conceited, once bold
and now lamented experiment
(foolish endeavour, so costly
was it, that Icarus quickly drowned
in the sea of his own tears)—
like the mind, here conquered
no less by the immense mass
of so much machinic bulk
(the sphere composed
of diverse kinds conglobed),
than by the properties
of each part, collapsed: so astonished
that—dropped among the copies,
and just as impoverished in the neutralities
of seas of wonder, of confused choices—
it was lost amidst the crashing waves,
and, by looking at everything, it saw nothing,
nor could it distinguish
(the intellectual faculties are the first to fail
when confronted with the innumerable
and incomprehensible species that it saw,
from one axis on which turns
the Sphere’s voluble machinery,
to the opposing pole)
the parts, no longer just all those
the universe considers to be perfect,
belonging only to its decoration,
but even those components
which make up its dilated body,
each proportionately competent.
                             But like one who is usurped
by diuturnal darkness,
losing the colours of visible objects,
if suddenly assailed by radiance,
by the excess of light is left further blinded
—where the contrary excess has such an effect
on this clumsy capacity that, unaccustomed to it,
the Sun’s light can’t then be endured—
and to the darkness itself, whose gloom
was once an impediment to sight,
from the grievances of light appeals,
with a hand held up to shade
those weak, blinded eyes
from the shimmering rays,
the shadows—pious intermediary—
serving now, an instrument
enabling the eyes
to recover by degrees,
so that then they might practice
more diligently their function
—natural resource, innate science
that has confirmed experience,
enabled a silent master
(such exemplary rhetoric) to lead
one then another Galenite
to extract from lethal venoms,
in carefully proportioned quantities
scrupulously measured,
the hidden, noxious qualities,
whether for extreme excess
of heat or cold,
or for unknown sympathies
or antipathies with which natural causes
work towards their progression
(for our admiration offering, suspended,
sure effects from unknown causes,
revealed through sleepless nights and meticulous,
empirical revision, examined
through the experience of animals,
because less dangerous),
to make a useful concoction:
the ultimate goal of Apollonian science,
a wondrous antidote;
in this way, good may be extracted from evil!
                             Not otherwise, the Soul, amazed
by the view of the plenitude that remained,
regathered her attention, which, spilled
across so much diversity, still could not
recover from the awe
(how magnificent it all was)
a calm discourse,
admitting only
from a hazy concept
the shapeless embryo that, poorly formed,
sketched an inordinate chaos
of the confused things it beheld
—orderless floods,
orderlessly overlapping,
the more they overlapped and combined,
the more they dissolved into disunities
full of diversity—
violently packing the diffusion
of so many things into such a small container
(even the lowest, even the smallest, the scarcest).