Quotes from Martín Espada

Even the most political poem is an act of faith.

the doctor gestures at the X-ray where the lung crumples like a tossed poem.

The poet's house was a city of glass:

At the tomb, a woman silent all along steps from the circle and says: I want to sing. Neruda. Poem Twenty. Then she climbs atop the tomb and sings: Tonight I can write the saddest verses.

When the poet died, they brought his coffin to the city of glass. There was no door: the door was a thousand daggers, beyond the door an ancient world in ruins, glass now arrowheads, axes, pottery shards, dust. There were no windows: fingers of air reached for glass like a missing lover's face.

One day, years later, the soldiers wheeled around to find themselves in a city of glass. Their rifles turned to carnival glass; bullets dissolved, glittering, in their hands. From the poet's zoo they heard monkeys cry; from the poet's observatory they heard poem after poem like a call to prayer.

Now you are dead, your heart throbbing too fast for the doctors at the veterans' hospital to keep the beat, their pill bottles rattling, maracas in a mambo for the doomed.

Soon your ashes fly to the veterans' cemetery at Arlington, where once a Confederate general would have counted you among his mules and pigs. This poet's coat is your last poem. I want to write a poem like this coat, with buttons and pockets and green cloth, a poem useful as a coat to a coughing man.

You sent your last letter months ago about the poems you could not write, no words to sing when the president swears that God breathes the psalms of armies in his ear, and flags twirl by the millions to fascinate us like dogs at the dinner table.

You said: There's a lot of places out there, friend, so you would go, smuggling a suitcase of words across every border carved by the heel of mapmakers or conquerors, because you had an all-night conversation with the world, hearing the beat of unsung poems in every voice, visiting the haunted rooms in every face. Drive, you said, because poets must bring the news to the next town: You got a song, man, sing it. You got a bell, man, ring it.

you mailed your banned poems cloaked as letters to your sister-in-law because the silence of the world was a storm flooding your ears.

Advice to Young Poets Never pretend to be a unicorn by sticking a plunger on your head.

Even the most political poem is an act of faith.

In the republic of poetry, the guard at the airport will not allow you to leave the country until you declaim a poem for her and she says Ah! Beautiful.