Ode to the Earth by Pablo Neruda

I do not sing to the prodigal earth, the profligate mother of roots, the squanderer choked with fruits and birds, with mud and flowing springs, homeland of the caiman, full-breasted sultana with spiky diadem, not to the birthplace of the jungle cat, to the tilled and gravid earth, its every seed a tiny nest ready to greet the dawn with song, no, I praise mineral earth, Andean rock, the severe scar of the lunar desert, the spacious nitrate sands,

I sing to iron, to the rippling of veins of copper and its clusters as it emerges, blasted and dusty, newly unearthed from its geography.