Ode To Clothing

 

Paolo Quaresima

Ode To Clothing

 

 Each morning you’re waiting
My clothing, on a chair
For me to fill you
With my vanity, my love
My hope, my body
I hardly
Have gotten out of sleep
I say goodbye to the water
I enter into your sleeves
My legs look for
The hollowness of your legs
And so embraced
By your tireless faithfulness
I go out to walk in the grass
I enter into poetry
I look through windows
At things
Men, women,
Deeds and struggles
Keep forming me
Keep coming against me
Laboring with my hands
Opening my eyes
Using up my mouth
And so,
Clothing,
I also keep forming you
Poking out your elbows
Snapping your threads
And so your life grows
Into the image of my life.
In the wind
You ripple and rustle
As if you were my soul.
In bad minutes
You stick
To my bones
Empty, through the night
Darkness, sleep
Populate with their fantasies
Your wings and mine.
I ask
If one day
A bullet
From the enemy
Might leave a spot of my blood on you
And then
You would die with me
Or maybe
It won’t all be
So dramatic
But simple
And you’ll just get feeble,
Clothing,
Growing old
With me, with my body
And together
We will enter
The earth.
That’s why
Every day
I greet you
With reverence and then
You embrace me and I forget you
Because we are just one
And we’ll keep going on together
Against the wind, in the night
The streets, or the struggle
One single body
May be, may be, some time will be immobile.

 

Pablo Neruda 

 

The clothing - what is it about?

Is Neruda really talking about his shirt?!  This idea of putting clothes on, of filling a space, of making a shape, of pushing against and being pushed back - what is it?

"Men, woman, deeds and struggles, keep forming me keep coming against me...and so, clothing, I keep forming you."

Is Neruda speaking of a line between who he is and the life he lives? Is he saying that the things and places he inhabits - even down to the clothing he puts on, are in relationship of wearing and fitting together, of forming each other, of push and pull on both sides - and are also in a kind of protective companionship against bigger forces "...we'll keep going on together/against the wind, in the night"?

I don't know.

Neruda is such a curious poet. I am fascinated. I know so much is missed in translation, but the hook is well-baited, and I can't leave his work alone. 

Just thinking about that - even if it wasn't his point, is interesting. Our daily lives as something we put on and wear in, stretch and smooth - something which influences how we act, but also something we influence. A constraint sometimes, but also a companion. 

I hadn't thought of it quite like that before.

 And then that line -

 

 "I go out to walk in the grass 

I enter poetry

I look through windows" 

 

So help me, that is beauty.

Here I am, filling my clothes, looking out my kitchen window -

I see it too, I feel it all around me.

 Poetry.