Explore "Lautaro Against the Centaur (1554)" by Pablo Neruda on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Then Lautaro attacked in waves.
He disciplined the Araucanian shadows: before, the Castilian knife plunged into the red mass's heart.
Today guerrilla warfare was sown beneath all the forest eaves, from stone to stone and ford to ford, watching from behind the copihues, lying in wait beneath the rocks.
Valdivia tried to retreat.
It was too late.
Lautaro arrived in a suit of lightning.
He followed the anguished Conquistador.
They made their way through the wet thickets of the austral twilight.
Lautaro arrived in a black gallop of horses.
Fatigue and death led
Valdivia's troops through the foliage.
Lautaro's spears drew near.
Amid corpses and leaves Pedro de Valdivia advanced, as in a tunnel.
Lautaro came in the dark.
He thought about stony Extremadura, about golden olive oil in the kitchen, the jasmine left beyond the seas.
He recognized Lautaro's war cry.
The sheep, the harsh homesteads, whitewashed walls, the Extremaduran afternoon.
Lautaro's night fell.
Intoxicated with blood, his captains staggered homeward, through night and rain.
Lautaro's arrows quivered.