A beetle

Also I went to the beetle

and inquired of him about life:

about his customs in autumn,

about his lineal armor.

I besought him in the lost lakes

in the dark south of my country,

I encountered him amidst the ash

of rancorous volcanoes

or climbing from the roots

towards his proper obscurity.

How did you make your hard suit?

Your eyes of zinc, your tie?

Your trousers of metal?

Your contradictory shears?

Your golden saw, your pliers?

What resins prepared withal

the incandescence of your species?

(I had wanted to own

the heart of a beetle

to perforate thickness

and leave my signature hidden

in the timber’s dying.)

((And so my name sometime

anew shall go at such time being born

through new nocturnal channels

until it exits the tunnel at last

with other wings to come.))

((Nothing handsomer than you

mute, bottomless beetle,

priest of roots,

rhinoceros of dew,))

I told him, but he didn’t tell me.

I asked him and he didn’t answer.

Thus are beetles.

Pablo Neruda