The First Solitude by Luis de Gongora (excerpt)
Appetence now is pilot, not of errant
trees, but of entire, mutable forests,
and first to leave Ocean, the father of waters
—of whose vast royal domain
the Sun, who day after day
is born in his waves and in his waves finds death,
does not wish to know boundaries or extent—
with hair turned white by the spume greed leaves behind, 410
though he admits no second
in professing those limits to the world.
Three firs of Appetence were those that violated
the trident of Neptune,
venturing farther than any other,
kissing the turquoise curtains that Occident
closes for the Sun in his dark blue bed
of deep marine waters.
Then in spite of flying asps
—shadow on the sun and venom on the wind— 420
of arrowed Caribs, greed’s flags and banners
always glorious, always fluttering
broke the Lestrigons that the isthmus armed
with multitudes of feathers, beasts with wings:
the isthmus that divides Ocean in two,
and—serpent of crystal—prevents the union
of the head, in the North crowned,
and the scaled tail that illuminates the South
with Antarctican stars.
Greed sent second barks to a second pole 430
in a new sea that offered him not only
the beautiful white daughters of its shells,
but murderous metals Midas never learned
to possess successfully.
Then it was not enough that this element
guided in orcas, enlisted monstrous whales,
erected battlements of foaming mountains,
defamed its own sands by blanching them white
with so many traces of the first daring
venture—piteous even to the vultures— 440
for those piteous traces to restrain
a second wave of bold temerities.
You, Appetence, oh you, hellish mariner
of deep Stygian waters,
you scorn all the sepulchers the savage sea
opens wide for your bones.
The promontory whose rocks Aeolus used
as locks for other new grottoes, a cave
for Auster the wind with wings that never dry,
for Mistral who breathes through a hundred mouths, 450
you rounded joyfully, and with obstinate
lateen yard transformed the cape into Good Hope.
(Translated by Edith Grossman)
