"Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World" by Martín Espada

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 24, 2018   Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World   Martín Espada

For the community of Newtown, Connecticut,                     where twenty students and six educators lost their                     lives to a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School,                     December 14, 2012   Now the bells speak with their tongues of bronze. Now the bells open their mouths of bronze to say: Listen to the bells a world away. Listen to the bell in the ruins of a city where children gathered copper shells like beach glass, and the copper boiled in the foundry, and the bell born in the foundry says: I was born of bullets, but now I sing of a world where bullets melt into bells. Listen to the bell in a city where cannons from the armies of the Great War sank into molten metal bubbling like a vat of chocolate, and the many mouths that once spoke the tongue of smoke form the one mouth of a bell that says: I was born of cannons, but now I sing of a world where cannons melt into bells.   Listen to the bells in a town with a flagpole on Main Street, a rooster weathervane keeping watch atop the Meeting House, the congregation gathering to sing in times of great silence. Here the bells rock their heads of bronze as if to say: Melt the bullets into bells, melt the bullets into bells. Here the bells raise their heavy heads as if to say: Melt the cannons into bells, melt the cannons into bells. Here the bells sing of a world where weapons crumble deep in the earth, and no one remembers where they were buried. Now the bells pass the word at midnight in the ancient language of bronze, from bell to bell, like ships smuggling news of liberation from island to island, the song rippling through the clouds.   Now the bells chime like the muscle beating in every chest, heal the cracks in the bell of every face listening to the bells. The chimes heal the cracks in the bell of the moon. The chimes heal the cracks in the bell of the world.                  From Bullets Into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence (Beacon Press, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Martín Espada. Used with permission of the author and Beacon Press. About This Poem   "As the dedication indicates, on December 14, 2012, a gunman killed twenty students and six educators at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. I wrote this poem for the National Children's Day event Within Our Reach, held at the Newtown Congregational Church on June 8, 2013—less than six months after the tragedy. The 'city where children gathered copper shells like beach glass' is Tirana, Albania, site of the Bell of Peace; the city 'where cannons from the armies of the Great War / sank into molten metal' is Rovereto, Italy, site of the Campana dei Caduti (Bell of the Fallen) or Maria Dolens bell. The 'town with a flagpole on Main Street' is, of course, Newtown." —Martín Espada     Martín Espada is the author of more than fifteen books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His most recent poetry collection is Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (W. W. Norton, 2016). He is currently a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.   Photo credit: David González Featured Poetry   Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence (Beacon Press, 2017)   Editors Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader used a phrase from Espada's poem for the title of their anthology, in which the poem appears. For more information about gun-related violence in the United States and to read more about the book, visit bulletsintobells.com. "@ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem" by Juan Felipe Herrera "what the dead know by heart" by Donte Collins "26" by Rachel Eliza Griffiths Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038