to the foot from its child

The child's foot is not yet aware it's a foot, 
and would like to be a butterfly or an apple.

But in time, stones and bits of glass, 
streets, ladders, 
and the paths in the rough earth 
go on teaching the foot that it cannot fly, 
cannot be fruit bulging on the branch. 
Then, the child's foot
is defeated, falls 
in the battle, 
is a prisoner 
condemned to live in a shoe.

Bit by bit, in that dark, 
it grows to know the world in its own way, 
out of touch with its fellow, enclosed, 
feeling out life like a blind man.

-Pablo Neruda, "Extravagaria"