Wednesday, July 21, 2004







I should finish the Pearls of Wisdom socks tomorrow - as you can see there are many ends to deal with. They also need blocking so you won't see them on the blog until Sunday afternoon. The letter knitting part goes really fast because it interests me; if I was knitting the same amount of plain stockinette it would take forever.



Here's the English translation of the Pablo Neruda poem in its entirety. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone we knit for was as thrilled with a pair of handknit socks?



ODE TO MY SOCKS  by Pablo Neruda



Maru Mori brought me

a pair

of socks 

which she knitted with her own

sheepherder 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 gigantic 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 scholars

collect

sacred documents,

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.



And the moral of my ode

is this:

beauty is twice

beauty

and what is good is doubly

good

when it's a matter of two

woolen socks

in winter.