Friday Writings for Randos - Ode to My Socks

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's ...

Ode to My Socks

by  Pablo Neruda

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted
with her own 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 the pelt of sheep,
Outrageous socks,
my feet became two fish made of wool,
two long sharks of ultramarine blue, 
crossed by one golden hair,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so beautiful that for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that embroidered fire,
of those luminous socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them 
as schoolboys keep fireflies,
as learned men collect sacred texts,
I resisted the wild impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day 
give them
birdseed and chunks of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the rare green deer
to the roasting 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 woolen socks
in winter.