Untilled Zones by Pablo Neruda — Read

Forsaken limit! Frenzied line on which wildfire or enraged thistle form layers of electrified blue.

Stones hammered by the copper's needles, roads of silent matter, branches submerged in the stones' salt.

Here I am, here am I, a human mouth abandoned to the pale passage of a time arrested like a wineglass or hip, a central penitentiary of impounded water, tree of a demolished corporal flower, nothing but deaf and brusque sand.

My country, earthly and blind as newborn spurs of sand, for you all my soul's foundation, for you my blood's perpetual eyelids, for you my plate of poppies home again.

Give me at night, amid the earthly plants, the sullen rose of dew that sleeps in your flag, give me of moon or earth your bread dusted with your frightful dark blood: beneath your sandy light there are no corpses, but long cycles of salt, blue branches of mysterious dead metal.