Maestros

To the Foot from its Child (Pablo Neruda)

The child’ s foot doesn’t know yet that it’ s a foot,

and wants to be a butterfly or an apple.

But then stones and pieces of glass,

streets, ladders,

and the paths of the hard earth

go on teaching the foot it can’ t fly,

that it can’ t be a round fruit on a branch.

The child’ s foot then

was overcome, it fell

in the battle,

was a prisoner,

condemned to live in a shoe.

Gradualy, without light,

it started to know the world in its own way,

without knowing the other foot, shut in,

exploring life like a blindman.

(…)

But this blind thing walked

without respite, without stopping

hour after hour,

one foot and then the other,

now a man’ s,

or a woman’ s,

(…)

this foot labored with its shoe,

it hardly took time

to be naked in love or in sleep,

it walked, they walked

until the whole man stopped.

And then it went down

into the earth and knew nothing,

because there everything was dark,

it didn’t know it had ceased being a foot,

if they had buried it so it could fly

or so that it could

become an apple.