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The Meaning of the Shovel

By Martín Espada b. 1957 Martin Espada

—Barrio René Cisneros
Managua, Nicaragua, June-July 1982

This was the dictator’s land

before the revolution.

Now the dictator is exiled to necropolis,

his army brooding in camps on the border,

and the congregation of the landless

stipples the earth with a thousand shacks,

every weatherbeaten carpenter

planting a fistful of nails.

Here I dig latrines. I dig because last week

I saw a funeral in the streets of Managua,

the coffin swaddled in a red and black flag,

hoisted by a procession so silent

that even their feet seemed

to leave no sound on the gravel.

He was eighteen, with the border patrol,

when a sharpshooter from the dictator’s army

took aim at the back of his head.

I dig because yesterday

I saw four walls of photographs:

the faces of volunteers

in high school uniforms

who taught campesinos to read,

bringing an alphabet

sandwiched in notebooks

to places where the mist never rises

from the trees. All dead,

by malaria or the greedy river

or the dictator’s army

swarming the illiterate villages

like a sky full of corn-plundering birds.

I dig because today, in this barrio

without plumbing, I saw a woman

wearing a yellow dress

climb into a barrel of water

to wash herself and the dress

at the same time,

her cupped hands spilling.

I dig because today I stopped digging

to drink an orange soda. In a country

with no glass, the boy kept the treasured bottle

and poured the liquid into a plastic bag

full of ice, then poked a hole with a straw.

I dig because today my shovel

struck a clay bowl centuries old,

the art of ancient fingers

moist with this same earth,

perfect but for one crack in the lip.

I dig because I have hauled garbage

and pumped gas and cut paper

and sold encyclopedias door to door.

I dig, digging until the passport

in my back pocket saturates with dirt,

because here I work for nothing

and for everything.

Martin Espada, “The Meaning of the Shovel” from Imagine the Angels of Bread. Copyright © 1996 by Martin Espada. Reprinted with the permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Source: Imagine the Angels of Bread (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1996)

Biography

Poet, essayist, translator, editor, and attorney: Martín Espada has dedicated much of his career to the pursuit of social justice, including fighting for Latino rights and reclaiming the historical record. Espada’s critically acclaimed collections of poetry celebrate—and lament—the immigrant and working class experience. Whether narrating the struggles of Puerto Ricans and Chicanos as they adjust to life in the United States, or . . .

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