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.

True, I have always been happy that all the things that are inside 
    the body are inside the body, and that all things outside 
    the body, are out

I'm glad to find my lungs on the inside of my chest, for example; 
    if they were outside, they'd keep getting in the way, 
    those two great incipient angel wings; besides, 
    it would be messy

I mean, how would it be if your reached out to shake someone's hand
    and there, in the palm, were a kidney and a liver complete with 
    spleen?

Can you imagine standing at 5 PM in a crowded subway car full of 
    empty stomachs?

What if a nice, nearsighted old lady were knitting socks and suddenly 
    her veins fell out? How would she avoid creating a substance 
    full of strangeness and pain? To the barefoot country boy 
    sitting on the edge of the bed in the morning and opening 
    Aunt Minnie's gift box, the sight of those socks would be 
    what he'd call "a real eye-opener!"

And what if our voices touched? If our mouths went out, instead of in?

If you were inside of me; or, at least, if I were inside of you?

            I love-love-loved the alphabet
back when I could use it to go OMG & WTF

vis-à-vis some shady late capitalist wrongdoing
such as the rich & famous floating off the continent

in the most flagrant of boats, leaving just
the youngsters & me here on the prairie

to keep everything intact with just this sugar on the mantle
in its charismatic tin.  But then the youngsters

got up from the knitting circle & put down their seedcakes
& other organic whatsits, saying OMG & WTF to me

as in in reference to me like what I had on was not just
the dress, the feeling unfortunately was, but also

a shawl as in a cloak as in a stole as in a shroud. 
That’s when I finally knew what animals

youngsters just naturally are.  What piles of tractor parts. 
What fishheads in a sink!  So now I’m using my Rosetta Stone

to examine the language of rhinos for the impenetrable skin
& the language of axes for the battle for when our foes return

to knock down our pretty little door. & here
I just wanted to sit out the rest of my days

with my sweeties by the hearth & talk the talk to hold at bay
whatever apocalyptic thing’s got our number as in our address

as in the extent to which we were born to fight moneyed reprobates
with just our lingo as in our candidness & cheeky verbal fluidity

if that’s what you want to call running out the clock on the ends of things
            in an old lonesome song like this. 

“yes of course” was one speech too many
now you’ve done it exposed your
obsequious emphases
                           hardly speech if disclosing nothing
thought to stay blameless in a
well-tended hothouse that’s now
            out of use beyond wear not in your possession
to break out so lay blame on
ritual pronouncements like
                          the unitary root of the whole is torn      
try knitting cozies to hide
your household aporias
                                       a little more than mortal   
how yarn can knit a surface
that will flaunt its absences
                          looking at it as though it were behind you
is how gnats spin a hole in
air & then slip right through it
           caterpillars moles lost limbs
try a little blind reaching
surprising what you can find