From the portfolio of 22 etchings by 22 artists, titled "Voice and Visions: A Book of Poems and Etchings." Printed by the Fort Mason Printmakers in San Francisco under the direction of Eleanor Rappe, each work was inspired by a poem of the artist's choice, corresponding to their assigned category: Part I, Of Love and Loss; Part II, Upon the Earth; Part III, Under the Heavens; Part IV, Journeys of the Mind; and Part V, Metamorphoses.
This print is from the fifth category: Metamorphoses. Its corresponding poem was "The Hunter in the Forest" by Pablo Neruda.
Into this forest of mine I go with my roots, / with my fruitfulness. "Where / do you come from?" asks / a green leaf broad as a map. / I don't reply. There / the earth is damp, / and my boots stick, seek, / knock for it to open, / but the earth is mute. / It will be mute until I begin to be / dead and living matter, climbing the plant, / brute trunk of a spiny tree / or quivering cup. / The earth is mute so as not to reveal / its different names or its vast language. / It is mute because it works away, / taking in, giving birth. / Whatever dies, it gathers in / like ancient, hungry creature. / Everything rots away in it - / even the shadow, / the lightning flash, / bony skeletons, / water, ash; / everything come together in the dew, / in the black drip / of the jungle. / The sun itself rots / and the broken gold / it sheds / falls into the sack of the jungle and soon / has fused to an amalgam, has turned to flour, / and its shining addition / has rusted away like abandoned armor. / I come to look for my roots, / the ones that discovered / the mineral food of the forest, / that fierce substance, / gloomy zinc, / poisonous copper. / That root has to nourish my blood. / Curling underneath / is the other weighty part / of the silence, / deep, like the print of a reptile. / It creeps on, devouring. / It comes to water and drinks it, / and up through the tree / goes the secret command. / Dark is the work / that makes the stars green.