One Hundred Years of Solitude

short time they did more
damage than the red ants:
they destroyed the furniture
in the parlor, in their madness
they tore to shreds the
hammock that had resisted
the sad bivouac loves of
Colonel Aureliano Buendía
and they disemboweled the
mattresses and emptied them
on the floor as they
suffocated in storms of
cotton. Although Aureliano
was just as ferocious a lover