Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Clothes" is a direct address to the clothes he is accustomed to wearing daily. An ode is the most formal of all the lyric forms and is often used to record the poet's serious thoughts and ideals about lofty subjects. Pablo Neruda on the contrary uses his ode to record his feelings about something as mundane as his everyday clothes.
The theme of this ode is the harmonious and interdependent relationship the poet enjoys with his clothes:
and so,
clothes,
I too go forming you,
extending your elbows,
snapping your threads,
and so your life expands
in the image of my life.
For most of us our clothes are merely our external garments to be worn and cast aside without a thought,but for Pablo Neruda they are very much an innate part of his entire being: "we are one." His clothes don't just cover his body but contain his entire being:
"to fill yourself with
my vanity, my love,
my hope, my body."
Even when he is not wearing his clothes and they have been left out to dry his clothes continue to embody the very core of his existence:
"In the wind
you billow and snap
as if you were my soul."
It is this symbiotic relationship which he enjoys with his clothes which makes him conclude:
"Because of this
each day
I greet you
with reverence and then
you embrace me and I forget you."
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