In celebration of National Poetry Month, Pablo Neruda's The Stones:
Stones, boulders, crags ... Perhaps they were
fragments of a deafening explosion. Or stalagmites that were
once submerged, or hostile fragments of the full moon, or
quartz that changed destiny, or statues that time and the wind
broke into pieces or kneaded into shapes, or figureheads of
motionless ships, or dead giants that were transmuted, or
golden tortises, or imprisoned stars, or ground swells as thick
as lava which suddenly became still, or dreams of the previous
earth, or the warts of another planet, or granite sparks that
stood still, or bread for furious ancestors, or the bleached bones
of another land, or enemies of the sea in their bastions, or
simply stone that is rugged, sparkling, grey, pure and heavy so
that you may construct, with iron and wood, a house in the
sand.
Pablo Neruda, The Stone
from The House in the Sand
translated by Dennis Maloney & Clark Zlotchew
Project photos by Boulder architects M. Gerwing Architects