Gold by Pablo Neruda — Read

Gold had that day of purity.

Before plunging its structure again into the dirty debut that awaits it, recently arrived, recently extracted from the solemn statue of the earth, it was purged by fire, enveloped by man's sweat and hands.

There the gold's people said goodbye.

And their contact was earthy, pure as the gray mother of emerald.

The sweaty hand that scoured the snarled ingot was like the stock of soil reduced by the infinite dimension of time, the earthly color of seeds, the ground charged with secrets, the earth that fashions clusters.

Lands of unstained gold, human stock, immaculate metal of the people, virginal veinstones that touch without seeing one another in the implacable junction of their two roads: man will keep biting the dust, he'll keep being flinty soil, and gold will rise above his blood until it wounds and rules over the wounded.