Gem Poetry

Pablo Neruda writes:

Here is the tree in the pure stone,
in the evidence, in the durable beauty
formed over a hundred million years.

Agate and carnelian and luminaries
replaced saps and wood
till the trunk of the giant
rejected the damp putrefaction
and amalgamated a parallel statue
the living foliage
stripped itself
and when the vertical was flattened,
consumed the forest, the igneous pall,
the celestial ashes covered it
till time and lava bestowed
a guerdon of transparent stone.