I walked: not only through the wasteland where the salted rock is
like the only rose, a flower buried in the sea-
but also on the banks of rivers gouging through the snow;
the high bitter mountain ranges felt my footsteps too.
Tangled, whistling realms of my savage homeland,
liana vines whose deadly kiss is chained to the jungle,
wet cry of the bird that rises, throwing off its shivers:
O realm of lost sorrow and inclement tears!
The poisonous skin of the copper, the nitrate salt spread out
like a statue, crumbled and snowy: they’re mine, but not
only them: also the vineyards, the cherries the spring rewards,
they are mine too, and I belong to them, like a black atom
in the arid land, in the autumn light on the grapes,
in this metallic homeland lifted by towers of snow.