‘The tree is here, still, in pure stone’

XVI: From: ‘Las Piedras del Cielo’

The tree is here, still, in pure stone,

in deep evidence, in solid beauty,

layered, through a hundred million years.

Agate, cornelian, gemstone

transmuted the timber and sap

until damp corruptions

fissured the giant’s trunk

fusing a parallel being:

the living leaves

unmade themselves

and when the pillar was overthrown

fire in the forest, blaze of the dust-cloud,

celestial ashes mantled it round,

until time, and the lava, created

this gift, of translucent stone.

IX From: ‘Cien sonetos de amor’

the brightness bursts and bears the rose

and the ring of water contracts to a cluster

to one drop of azure brine that falls.

O magnolia radiance breaking in spume,

magnetic voyager whose death flowers

and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:

shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.

Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence

while the sea destroys its continual forms,

collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,

because in the weft of those unseen garments

of headlong water, and perpetual sand,

we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.

- Pablo Neruda