This poem is so gorgeous. I first read it many years ago — and its message of simple, humble devotion has never left me. It is one very eloquent man’s love poem — to his favorite suit.

I dedicate it today to all of those hopelessly romantic, textillian souls like myself — who have passionately loved an article of clothing as if it were a very extension of oneself, and mourned its eventual passing like an old friend — particularly ms. , who has been known to wear 50-year-old black crinolines until they literally crumble from her body and turn to dust…tinkling to the earth beneath her, coating her sensible shoes, and powdering her wake like a prayer.

Ode to My Suit

Every morning, suit,
you are waiting on a chair
to be filled
with my vanity, my love,
my hope, my body.
Still
only half awake
I leave the shower
to shrug into your sleeves,
my legs seek
the hollow of your legs,
and thus embraced
by your unfailing loyalty
I take my morning walk
work my way into my poetry;
from my window I see
the things
men, women,
events and struggles
constantly shaping me,
constantly confronting me,
setting my hands to the task,
opening my eyes,
creasing my lips,
and the same way,
suit,
I am shaping you,
poking out my elbows,
wearing you threadbare, and so your life grows,
in the image of my own.
In the wind
you flap and hum
as if you were my soul,
in bad moments
you cling
to my bones,
abandoned, at nighttime
darkness and dream
people with their phantoms
your wings and mine.
I wonder
whether some day
an enemy
bullet
will stain you with my blood,
for then
you would die with me,
but perhaps
it will be less dramatic,
simple,
and you will grow ill,
suit,
with me,
grow older
with me, with my body
and together we will be lowered
into the earth.
That’s why
every day
I greet you
with respect and then
you embrace me and I forget you,
because we are one being
and shall be always
in the wind, through the night,
the streets and the struggle,
one body,
maybe, maybe, one day, still.

— Pablo Neruda, 1904-1973