You may know that my favourite poet is Martín Espada; he was born in 1957, of Puerto Rican heritage, and the island features in many of his poems. He is a lawyer, a teacher, an editor, a translator as well as a poet. He is extremely active politically, fighting for the rights or the poor, the oppressed, those who without him would have no hope. You can read a fuller biography here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/martin-espada
When I was teaching, and teaching young people who may well have needed someone like Martín to help them when things went wrong in the chaotic and deprived lives, Martín’s poems reached them in a way few others really did. My students loved poetry, and loved the lessons, but they were always pleased when I told them we were going to look at a new poem by Martín. Here is one of their favourites, an urban horror story!
The Arm
A man pushing
onto a subway train
gorged with bodies
is blocked out by the doors
squeezing shut,
but for one arm, caught within.
The arm protrudes at first,
a beggar’s patience,
waiting for the doors to open.
But the train instead
locks the arm in its teeth
and lopes across the tracks,
he man in a stumbling waltz
dragged along the platform,
as the fingers of the arm grope out
amid a shrieking aviary of commuters.
As the huge throat of tunnel approaches,
the arm slides down between the doors
and disappears, whether from perseverance
or a body crushing into the wall,
whether mutilation by sleepy conductors
startled by the loud thump from behind,
or salvation by the quick fingers of demons
sneering at their own joke,
no one knows.
By Martín Espada
Find out more about Martín:
Lois Elsden 