Remake of Me the Sickle for Thy Grain
- Remake of Me the Sickle for Thy Grain
For Arturo Giovannitti
Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1912
Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread.
The poet of the Bread and Roses strike, in his cravat and velvet vest, messenger from the Industrial Workers of the World to the laborers in the mills, spoke to them in Dante's tongue till they poured into the streets as water pours from a shattered earthenware jug.
Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread.
Incitement to riot, accessory to murder, said the law after blood matted the hair of a picketing girl shot by a cop. In the jailhouse where accused witches once meditated on the same gallows, the poet carved in fountain pen a poem in the voice of the iron bars that caged him at the feet of the judge:
Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread.
He rose from the cage in the courtroom, still wearing his cravat and vest, speaking to the gallery in Shakespeare's tongue, till the reporters who knew the creak of the gallows heard themselves sniffling in the distance, and the sleeves of the jurors hid their eyes as the foreman said: not guilty.
Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread.
Whenever he would speak, the crowd became the chorus in his opera; Helen Keller, socialist, typed in Braille the words to introduce his book; [End Page 4] he saw his own face smiling stiffly back at him on one-cent postcards; he loosened his cravat at meeting after meeting in the sweatshops.
Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread.
A century gone, the mills gone, the union gone, the books gone, the poet faded as poets fade, like fountain pen, bedridden in a tenement room, paralysis of the legs bewildering the doctor with his black bag, the bottle of wine always by the bed, yet the iron in the bars of the cage still prays:
Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread. Remake of me the sickle for thy grain; remake of me the oven for thy bread. [End Page 5]
MARTÍN ESPADA has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His forthcoming book of poems is called Floaters. Other collections of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), and Alabanza (2003). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). His honors include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His book of essays, Zapata's Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.
