Read "The Earth" by Pablo Neruda online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The dog that backtracks in autumn, tracing golden circumferences among the leaves, barking toward unknown days, continues being yellow, yellow.
So shall you see the unforeseen in certain situations: beside the explorer of terrible frontiers that open to the infinite, here is my dog: autumn's stray animal.
How can one move from earth to time, from a savor to starboard, from the speed of light to earthly circumstance?
Who in the darkness will divine the seed if, like strands of hair, the leafy groves let fall dew on horseshoes, on heads that love unites, on the ashes of worn-out hearts?
This planet, carpet thousands of years old, shall flourish but it does not accept death nor repose: each spring the sun's keys open fertility's cyclical locks, and cascading bunches of fruit resound, the earth's splendor rises and falls to the mouth and humankind is thankful for the goodness of its kingdom.
Praised be the old land the color of excrement, her cavities, her sacrosanct ovaries, the storehouses of wisdom that contained copper, oil, magnets, ironworks, purity.
The lightning bolt that seemed to fall from hell was hoarded by the ancient mother of roots and each day bread came out to greet us, unperturbed by the blood and death we humans wear, the accursed progeny who deliver light unto the world.