Ode to my Socks



Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
that she knitted with hands
of a shepherdess,
two soft socks
like hares.
I put
my feet in them
as in
two
boxes
knitted
with twilight’s thread
and sheep’s hides.

Violent socks,
my feet were
two woolen
fish,
two big sharks
of ultramarine blue
crossed
by a braid of gold,
two gigantic blackbirds,
two canyons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
celestial
socks.
They were
so handsome
that at first
my feet appeared to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
of those luminous
socks.

Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to keep watch over them
as schoolboys
protect
fireflies,
as scholars
collect
sacred documents,
I resisted
the furious impulse
to put them
in a golden
cage
and to give them
birdseed and
the pulp of rosy melon
every day.
Like discoverers
who in the jungle
submit the rare green
deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched
my feet
and wrapped myself in
the
beautiful
socks
and
later in my shoes.
And this
is the moral of my ode:
two times is beauty
beauty
and that which is good is doubly
good
when speaking of two
woolen socks
in Winter.

Pablo Neruda