"Ode to My Socks" by Pablo Neruda

Mara 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 if they were 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

in 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.

translated by Robert Bly