What is this river in the stars
girding the celestial sphere,
set, like a ring, with precious gems?
          I put it to the mythologists;
said one, “It’s milk that Juno spilled
while giving breast to Hercules.”
Another held that Phaëthon’s fall
from his fiery chariot sent the orb
          swerving off its course,
scorching the trackless space in its path.

Not entirely satisfied,
I tried philosophers and astronomers.
Aristotle replied: “It’s a cloud
of parched vapors with flaming hair
trailing high above the ether.
“No!”  said a disciple. “When first
the sun began its travels through
the starry spheres, its chariot left
this imprint on the firmament.”
“I think,” said Democritus,
“that it’s the light of countless stars
all gathering in the sidereal blue
like water lilies bright upon the Nile.”
I asked Theophrastus to state his view,
and his reply was this: “That’s where
God united the halves of the starlit
vault of heaven. You can see in the cleft
at the seam where they once were welded together
the light of the firmament seeping through.”

I asked an old shepherd from Núria what he thought,
and he told me it was the Way of St. James,
where, following his example,
souls make their ascent to Glory.

He couldn’t read or write any more than his goats,
this old shepherd from Núria,
but I put his shining answer above
that of Aristotle
and all the sages of Ancient Greece.