The bellringer

Even the one who returned

from mountain, sand,

sea, ore, water,

with hands quite empty,

even the tamer

who returned from the horse

in a box, broken up

and deceased

or the woman with seven hands

who in the loom

suddenly lost the thread

and returned to the ovary,

to be no more than a tatter,

or even the bellringer

who while moving

on a rope

the firmament

fell from the churches

toward obscurity

and the graveyard:

even all of these

went off

with their hands spoiled

not by gentleness but something else:

corrosive time,

the substance

inimical

of coal, waves,

cotton, wind,

because sorrow alone taught being:

because making was the destiny of their hands

and into every scar life fits.

Pablo Neruda