I don't believe in age. All old people carry in their eyes, a child, and children, at times observe us with the eyes of wise ancients. Shall we measure life in meters or kilometers or months? How far since you were born? How long must you wander until like all men instead of walking on its surface we rest below the earth? To the man, to the woman who utilized their energies, goodness, strength, anger, love, tenderness, to those who truly alive flowered, and in their sensuality matured, let us not apply the measure of a time that may be something else, a mineral mantle, a solar bird, a flower, something, maybe, but not a measure. Time, metal or bird, long petiolate flower, stretch through man's life, shower him with blossoms and with bright water or with hidden sun. I proclaim you road, not shroud, a pristine ladder with treads of air, a suit lovingly renewed through springtimes around the world. Now, time, I roll you up, I deposit you in my bait box and I am off to fish with your long line the fishes of the dawn!
translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
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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.
@DanielChristensen: I remember reading that in school. The line about putting the socks in a golden cage and feeding them melon chunks was my favorite.
I recently read a 900 + page collection of his works. I feel like the way he sees things is unparalleled. My works are passionate, but his imagination makes my works look drab.