I met the Mexican Tihuatin
a few centuries ago, in Jalapa,
and later after each time I found him
in Colombia, in Iquique, in Arequipa,
I began to wonder if he really existed.
His hat had seemed
strange to me when
that man, a potter by trade,
lived by Mexican clay,
later he was an architect, a foreman
in a foundry in Venezuela,
a miner and a governor in Guatemala.
I wondered how, being the same age,
only three hundred years old,
I of the same trade, daydreaming
in my foundry of bells,
always striking stone or metal
so that someone will hear the sound
and know my voice, my singular voice,
this man, from wasted years
sailing rivers that do not exist,
how was he changed by those changes?

Then I understood that I was he,
that we were one more survivor
among others from here and there,
and those of the same lineage, equal, buried,
their hands crusted with sand,
always being born and everywhere
seized by an endless task.

	- Pablo Neruda