Canto General

Before the wig and the dress coat there were rivers, arterial rivers: there were cordilleras, jagged waves where the condor and the snow seemed immutable: there was dampness and dense growth, the thunder as yet unnamed, the planetary pampas.

Man was dust, earthen vase, an eyelid of tremulous loam, the shape of clay - he was Carib jug, Chibcha stone, imperial cup or Araucanian silica. Tender and bloody was he, but on the grip of his weapon of moist flint, the initials of the earth were written. - from A Lamp on Earth