I saw this beetle yesterday and thought of this poem by Pablo Neruda.
Beetle
I went to the beetle
with my question about life:
the rites of his autumn,
his linear armor.
I hunted him down in the lost lakes
of the black south of my country.
I found him in the volcano’s
malevolent ash,
or followed the fall of his roots
into innermost darkness.
How did you work those hard things?
Your zinc eyes and your necktie?
Your cast-iron trousers?
Your contradictory scissors?
Your gold ridges, the tongs of your claws?
What resins could ripen
the incandescence of your kind?
For myself I ask only
a scarab’s heart
to push past the densities
and sign my name’s secret
in the death of the wood.
(Who knows? My name might take on
new life, turn to the light
new channels in midnight,
come out at the opposite end of the tunnel
with the other wings waiting their turn?)
What is prettier than you,
beetle, inscrutably mute,
priest of the roots,
rhinoceros of dew,
I said. He said nothing.
I asked. He said nothing.
There’s a beetle for you.
— Pablo Neruda
(Translated by Ben Belitt)