Mara Mori brought me <br />a pair of socks <br />which she knitted herself <br />with her sheepherder's hands, <br />two socks as soft as rabbits. <br />I slipped my feet into them <br />as if they were two cases <br />knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin, <br />Violent socks, <br />my feet were two fish made of wool, <br />two long sharks <br />sea blue, shot through <br />by one golden thread, <br />two immense blackbirds, <br />two cannons, <br />my feet were honored in this way <br />by these heavenly socks. <br />They were so handsome for the first time <br />my feet seemed to me unacceptable <br />like two decrepit firemen, <br />firemen unworthy of that woven fire, <br />of those glowing socks. <br /> <br />Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation <br />to save them somewhere as schoolboys <br />keep fireflies, <br />as learned men collect <br />sacred texts, <br />I resisted the mad impulse to put them <br />in a golden cage and each day give them <br />birdseed and pieces of pink melon. <br />Like explorers in the jungle <br />who hand over the very rare green deer <br />to the spit and eat it with remorse, <br />I stretched out my feet and pulled on <br />the magnificent socks and then my shoes. <br /> <br />The moral of my ode is this: <br />beauty is twice beauty <br />and what is good is doubly good <br />when it is a matter of two socks <br />made of wool in winter.<br /><br />Pablo Neruda<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ode-to-my-socks/
