While the names of God were spoken
by the best and the worst, by the clean and the dirty,
by whites and blacks…
when fewer and smaller divine footprints were found on the beach,
men began to examine the colors,
the promise of honey, the symbol for uranium,
with suspicion and hope they studied the possibilities
of killing and not killing each other, of organizing themselves in rows,
of going even further, of making themselves limitless, without rest.

We who live though these ages with their bloody flavor,
the smell of smoking rubble, of dead ash,
we who were not able to forget the sight
have often stopped to think in the names of God,
have raised them up tenderly, because they reminded us
of our ancestors, of the first humans, of those who asked questions,
of those who found the hymn that unties them in misery,
and now seeing the empty fragments where that man lived
we finger those smooth substances
spent, squandered by good and evil.

~ Pablo Neruda, Gautama Christ, Winter Garden