This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges,
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year that those
who swim the border's undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side.

If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;

So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.

Martín Espada, adapted from “Imagine the Angels of Bread”


haggadah Section: Maggid - Beginning
Source: Martín Espada