Poetry on Thursday

It's been chilly here this week, and I seem to have a very narrow temperature range in which I'm comfortable. Unfortunately, John's comfort range is much warmer than mine, but we do agree that the house needs to be cool to sleep well at night. I woke up at 3:00 am with my feet freezing and when I put on a darned but warm pair of alpaca socks, I was able to slip blissfully back into sleep. When I woke up the next morning I was busy singing the praises of my socks to John, and that reminded me of this poem. 

Pearls of Wisdom socks - socks with Neruda's poem knit into them in the original Spanish. 

Ode to My Socks

by Pablo Neruda

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as though into
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and goatskin.
Violent socks,
my feet were
two fish made
of wool,
two long sharks
sea-blue, shot
through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
They were
so handsome
for the first time
my feet seemed to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that woven
fire,
of those glowing
socks.

Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere
as schoolboys
keep
fireflies,
as learned men
collect
sacred texts,
I resisted
the mad impulse
to put them
into a golden
cage
and each day give them
birdseed
and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers
in the jungle who hand
over the very rare
green deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched out
my feet
and pulled on
the magnificent
socks
and then my shoes.

The moral
of my ode is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool
in winter.

"Ode to My Socks" from Neruda & Vallejo: Selected Poems, by Pablo Neruda and translated by Robert Bly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).

You can read more about the poet here. 

I wish you mindfulness, peace, good health, warm socks on your feet and on your needles, and some poetry as this week winds down.