When we arrived, the city was abuzz with inauguration activity. There were souvenir vendors all over the National Mall and special inauguration-themed menus and drinks being served at restaurants; details about the ceremony and festivities appeared on every news program. Even as I saw my name flashed across the TV screens in the lobby of our hotel—“Richard Blanco, Inaugural Poet”—I hadn’t quite fathomed the entire scope of such an honor. For the most part, poets live and write contentedly inside the circle of literati and academics, myself included. Accustomed to that kind of relative obscurity, I naively thought I’d simply read my poem, shake a few hands, get back home, and that would be that. Not so. The days ahead proved to be abruptly life changing, filled with unexpected experiences and realizations that were somewhat tangential to the writing of the poem but nevertheless important and unique parts of my journey as inaugural poet.
Ushered around by David, I spent the first few days in the city with my village dashing from one interview to another at major news stations from the United States and around the world (CNN, Telemundo, the BBC, Univision, PBS). Suddenly I was thrust into a whole new world of make-up rooms, microphone wires, spotlights, and newsroom sets, with cameras eyeing me from every angle. It was terrifying and yet wonderful, thanks to David, who dissipated my anxiety with his witty one-liners that kept me in stitches. But more important, he was a cubanito like me, who grew up in my Miami. He knew my story, wanted me to tell it, and believed in it. He empowered me to trust that my story was important and to believe it could make a difference in the lives of millions of immigrants and LGBT people—all of them Americans. I soon felt and accepted a responsibility to speak so that we might all be heard, respected, and legitimized. The sense of serving a greater good, afforded by my role as inaugural poet, was humbling and gave me the courage to look into the cameras honestly and speak the most intimate details of my life to the world without reservation.
But David hadn’t expected a poet to step into the spotlight as naturally as I did. Even I was surprised by how comfortable I began to feel in front of the cameras. In retrospect, I understand that something grander took over my being, rooted in my personal beliefs about the art of poetry. Throughout years of writing, I had come to think of the poem as a mirror in which the reader and the poet stand side by side: the reader catching a reflection of his or her own life blurred with the poet’s life. Connecting to people—and having them connect emotionally to their own lives—had become a kind of personal mission underlying my poems, my fundamental belief that this indeed was the ultimate beauty, power, and purpose of poetry. I recognized the inaugural poem as a great opportunity—perhaps the single greatest opportunity I’d have—for poetry to engage America in this way: “One Today,” a great big mirror for all of us to look into, together. An even greater sense of purpose and duty as inaugural poet emerged as a result, emboldening me to speak about poetry and my story.
Evenings we attended several pre-inauguration events throughout the city, witnessing an interesting intersection of politics and celebrity—DC meets Hollywood. I must confess I had held a slight aversion toward celebrities and most pop icons, believing poetry and poets had no place in their world. But I was proven wrong. At one dinner party I had a most unexpected conversation with Eva Longoria about Latino literature and her initiative for the Latino Museum in DC. She was also one of the minds behind the Latino Inaugural 2013, a special celebration at the Kennedy Center, where actor Wilmer Valderrama performed a dramatic reading of my poem “When I Was a Little Cuban Boy.” Backstage, he told me how much he loved the poem and confessed that he’d been rehearsing it for days, wanting to get it just right. I had similar exchanges about poetry and literature with almost every celebrity and mover-and-shaker I met, from Star Jones to the mayor of San Antonio, Julian Castro, from will.i.am to Nancy Pelosi. Everyone seemed genuinely interested in my story, proud of my selection as poet, and excited about poetry, often asking me for a hint about what my inaugural poem was about. The inauguration had poetry on everyone’s minds, I realized, demonstrating its potential to hold a more vital, popular place in our lives, even in the lives of celebrities.
. . . this poem for us today. All of us . . .
The night before the inauguration, I practice reading the poem aloud one last time in my hotel room, imagining four hundred thousand snowmen listening to me. I then sit quietly by myself, marking up my reading copy and preparing my binder with the poem. In the sleeve I put a hand-colored photo of my maternal grandparents, whom I had never met, wanting them to be with me in spirit at the podium. I look into the story in their eyes again, my mother’s story, my story. And I also place one of Mark’s notes that I’d saved in which he wrote: READ IT/ FEEL IT. LOSE YOURSELF IN THE POEM. A certain peace falls over me and I doze off with the poem cradled in my hands, held against my chest. Mark eventually wakes me up. I stumble to bed and fall back asleep knowing my life will never be the same after tomorrow. I don’t remember what I dreamt that night, but it wouldn’t have mattered: the line between dream and reality had blurred almost beyond recognition. My life, the poem, and the moment are one by then.
I’m not a morning person, but on January 21, I’m up and about at 6:30 a.m., wanting to savor the day that will only happen once in my lifetime. After three double espressos, I take the poem out yet again and find a solitary spot outside on the lower terrace of the hotel. For the last time I begin reading over it silently: One sun rose on us today . . . And as I do, the sun begins peeking above the rooftops as if enacting the poem, blinding me the way Robert Frost was blinded by the sun the morning of his inaugural reading decades ago. I’m not one to readily believe in mystical signs, but if there ever is a time to believe something greater is speaking to me, it is now. The sun becomes a sunflower—my sunflower again; for a moment it again revolves around the earth, around me and the poem in my hands.
I get dressed, put on the silver eagle cufflinks that Mark surprised me with as a gift the day before. I then straighten my tie and catch my eyes in the mirror. But they are not my eyes, exactly; they are the eyes of the poet who will read. It is that familiar, though infrequent, feeling that many artists speak of, that sense of being a channel, a medium possessed by the muse. By 8:30 a.m. I find myself riding in a motorcade just like in the movies, darting through the streets in a black SUV with my mother and Mark seated beside me, along with David, Nikki, and Alison. Just as we did during the sound-check rehearsal, we are escorted by staff into one of the Capitol offices—the holding room. We can barely speak, keeping a reverent silence as we wait, our eyes glued to the TV monitor panning scenes of the inaugural stage, where my mother and I will soon take our seats. A few minutes before being called out, we gather in a circle and hold hands in a prayer led by David to offer our gratitude for the beauty of the moment unfolding before us.
Arm in arm, I escort my mother down the steps to the Capitol platform. Her story began when she was born in a dirt-floor home in rural Cuba. She sold oranges to pay for schoolbooks and had only one pair of shoes, and now she is a guest of honor seated next to her son on stage with the president of the United States, members of the US Congress and Supreme Court, as well as James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson, and Beyoncé. I’m not sure if my mother was nervous, proud, bored, shocked, or all of the above. She’s always been a hard person to read. Sometimes she comes across as fearless and blunt (When they going to start dis thing? I’m freezing, she complains). Other times vulnerable (she takes my hand and tells me, Ay mijo, I wish tu padre could be here with us), sometimes animated and jovial (I used to have a figure como la Beyoncé, believe it or not, she claims, cracking a smile), other times stoic and reserved. She gives me that wide-eyed look I’ve known since I was a child, silently telling me to sit still, behave, stop fidgeting with my binder, which I flip through over and over again to make sure all the pages of the poem are there. I adjust my tie a half dozen times and glance at my wristwatch every few minutes. My mother offers me a honey-filled candy. A mother no matter t
he occasion—my mother, beside me as she has always been, with a piece of candy, a scolding, a kiss, a complaint, or a story to tell me.
The horns blare and the ceremony finally begins. I begin taking it all in, listening to the opening remarks by Senator Charles Schumer, followed by Myrlie Evers-Williams’s invocation. Slowly and unexpectedly, a powerful feeling of innocent pride for my country takes over. Something I hadn’t felt since grade-school days coloring dittos of the Pilgrims and Indians at Thanksgiving, or George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, or maps of the fifty states. Since I first memorized the Pledge of Allegiance and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Or the first time I read the Declaration of Independence in high school. Instead of becoming increasingly nervous as my time at the podium approaches, I become entranced by a palpable sense of reverence and unity. I am struck by the importance of the occasion, together with the hundreds of thousands of people—we—who have come to bear witness to the founding ideals of America, which come to life during the inauguration; we, who have come to remind our elected president, You are here because we are here.
In the moment I feel America standing as one, putting differences aside, and taking a deep collective breath. We pay tribute to something far bigger and more important than any one of us. And I truly feel like one of us, one of We, the people, in the echoes of the president’s inaugural speech:
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
I embrace America in a way I never had or thought I could, feeling for the first time that I belong—truly belong—to one country. Not an imaginary ideal from TV or a nostalgic island floating in the sea of my parents’ memories, but a real, tangible place that is mine—was mine all along. I turn to my mother and whisper, “Mamá, I think we’re finally americanos.” She gives me a tender look as if saying, I know, I know. Indeed, I realize it was always one story I was born into, one story for me to discover and claim, one story to make my own.
In that instant I understand “One Today” as a gift to America. Inspired by that realization, I find the courage to open up my binder to the poem and add “for us today” at the end of the second stanza, as well as tinker with a few other phrases. Again I am struck by the trust the administration has placed in me; I could have read a radically different poem than the one they had read and selected.
Senator Charles Schumer introduces me and calls me up to the podium. My mother squeezes my shoulder. I stand more confident than I imagined I would or could be, transfixed by the moment that is no longer about me, or my poem, or my glory, but about our America. Still, I’m surprised when the president and vice president stand up to greet me and shake my hand on my way to the podium; they both whisper something in my ear that I can’t make out. But their gracious gestures speak silently to my heart, as if saying: Here is your country. This is your story. I step up to the podium, look out over the crowd: a patchwork quilt of lives, of stories spread across our ground, under our sky, beneath our one sun. I take it all in as I take one deep breath, then another. This is for them, for us, for all of us, I think to myself and begin speaking into our wind: “Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, America . . .”
ONE TODAY
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem for us today.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of our farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables. Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello / shalom /
buon giorno / howdy / namaste / or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always, always
home, always under one sky, our sky. And always
one moon like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars. Hope—a new constellation waiting
for us to map it, waiting for us to name it—together.
HOY, UNO
Un mismo sol hoy, encendido sobre nuestras costas,
se asoma sobre las Smokies, saluda las caras
de los Grandes Lagos, difunde una simple verdad
a través de las Grandes Llanuras, luego a la carga por las Rocosas.
Una misma luz despierta los techos: debajo de cada uno, un cuento
de nuestros gestos que se mueven, callados, detrás de las ventanas.
Mi rostro, tu rostro, millones en los espejos de la mañana,
cada uno bostezando a la vida, culminando en nuestro día:
camiones de escuela amarillo lápiz, el ritmo de los semáforos,
puestos de fruta: manzanas, limones, y naranjas surtidos como arcoíris
suplican nuestros elogios. Carreteras rebosando de camiones plata
cargados con aceite o papel, ladrillos o leche, junto a nosotros.
Vamos de camino a limpiar mesas, a leer registros o a salvar vidas—
a enseñar geometría, o atender la caja registradora como lo hizo mi madre
durante veinte años, para que yo pudiera escribirles este poema hoy.
Cada uno de nosotros tan vital como la luz única que atravesamos
la misma luz en los pizarrones con las lecciones del día:
ecuaciones por resolver, historia por cuestionar, o átomos imaginados,
el “Yo tengo un sueño” que seguimos soñando,
o el vocabulario imposible de la tristeza que no explica
los pupitres vacíos de veinte niños ausentes
hoy, y para siempre. Muchas plegarias pero una misma luz
inhala color a los vitrales,
sopla vida a las caras de las estatuas, y calienta
los escalones de nuestros museos y bancas del parque
mientras las madres observan a los niños adentrarse en el día.
Una misma tierra. Nuestra tierra, nos arraiga a cada tallo
For All of Us, One Today Page 5
