Poemas de Amanda Gorman

La colina que subimos

El día llega cuando nos preguntamos
¿Dónde encontraremos la luz en medio de esta sombra interminable?
La pérdida que acarreamos. El mar que vadeamos.

Escapamos de la entraña de la fiera.
Hemos aprendido que la quietud no siempre significa paz
Y que las normas, las nociones de lo que es “justo”
No siempre significan justicia.
Y sin embargo el amanecer llega antes de lo esperado.

De alguna manera lo logramos
De alguna manera resistimos y fuimos testigos
De una nación que no se quebró
Que simplemente necesita completarse.
Nosotros, los herederos de un país y un tiempo
Donde una muchacha negra, delgada, descendiente de esclavos
Y criada por una madre soltera
Puede soñar con ser presidente
Y encontrarse recitando para el presidente.

Y sí, estamos lejos de ser prístinos, sin mancha,
Lo que significa que no estamos luchando por la Unión perfecta
Estamos luchando por una Unidad con propósito,
Por construir un país comprometido con todas las culturas,
Los colores, personalidades y la condición humana.
De forma que alzamos la mirada
no hacia lo que se interpone entre nosotros ,
sino a lo que está frente a nosotros.

Obviamos lo que nos divide porque sabemos que por el futuro
Debemos apartar las diferencias.
Doblamos los brazos para poder extenderlos hacia los demás.
Para no dañar a nadie y hacer la armonía entre todos.

Que si algo diga el mundo, que diga que esta es la verdad.
Que aún si nos lamentamos, nos levantamos
Que aún si nos dolimos, no nos desesperanzamos
Que aún si nos cansamos, continuamos tratando
Que para siempre estaremos enlazados juntos
Y victoriosos.

No porque ya nunca conoceremos la derrota
Sino porque nunca más sembraremos la división.
Las Escrituras nos piden que visionemos
que todos se sentarán bajo su propio viñedo e higuera
sin que nadie les haga temer.
Si hemos de ser dignos de nuestro tiempo,
la victoria no vendrá de la espada,
sino de los puentes que tendamos.
Esa es la promesa de la felicidad,
la colina que alcanzaremos
Si nos atrevemos.

Porque ser americano es más que el orgullo que heredamos
Es el pasado que nos calzamos y cómo lo reparamos.
Hemos visto una fuerza dispuesta a destruir
antes que compartir nuestra nación.
La resquebrajaría si así pudiera retardar la democracia
Ese esfuerzo estuvo cerca de ser exitoso.
Pero si la democracia puede temporalmente retrasarse,
Nunca puede permanentemente acabarse.
En esta verdad, en esta fe, confiamos
porque mientras nosotros miramos al futuro,
los ojos de la historia nos miran a nosotros.

Esta es la era de la justa redención.
Temimos su aproximación.
No nos sentimos preparados para ser los herederos
De hora tan terrible.
Pero dentro de ella encontramos el poder
de escribir un nuevo capítulo,
de ofrecernos esperanza, de reír.
Así que, como una vez nos preguntamos
cómo venceríamos en la catástrofe,
ahora proclamamos
¿cómo es que la catástrofe nos vencería?

No habrá marcha atrás hacia lo que fue,
sino avance hacia lo que será;
n país lacerado, pero entero,
benévolo, pero decidido, fiero y libre.
No volveremos al camino andado
ni aceptaremos intimidaciones que causen interrupciones
porque sabemos que nuestra inmovilidad,
nuestra inercia sería la herencia
de la generación que viene, su futuro.
Nuestras fallas serían sus fardos.

Pero una cosa es cierta: si unimos piedad con poder
y poder con deber, el amor será el legado
que cambie los derechos de nuestros hijos al nacer.
Así que dejémosles a ellos un país mejor
del que nos legaron a nosotros.

Con cada aliento del bronce martillado en mi pecho,
levantaremos este mundo herido hacia un mundo hermoso.
Nos levantaremos desde las doradas colinas de Occidente,
Nos levantaremos desde el Nordeste
batido por el viento donde comenzó la revolución de los ancestros
Nos levantaremos desde las ciudades
al lado de los lagos de los estados del Medio Oeste
Nos levantaremos desde el Sur horneado por el sol
Nos levantaremos, reconstruiremos,
nos recuperaremos y reconciliaremos
Y de cada rincón de nuestra nación,
de cada esquina de este nuestro país,
Este pueblo diverso y bello
se levantará maltratado y hermoso
El día llega para salir de las sombras,
de las llamas, sin miedo.

El nuevo amanecer se infla como un enorme globo
mientras lo liberamos.
Porque siempre hay luz
si sólo tenemos suficiente valor para verla,
suficiente valor para serla.

The Hill We Climb

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade.
We’ve braved the belly of the beast,
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
and the norms and notions
of what just is
isn’t always just-ice.
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken,
but simply unfinished.
We the successors of a country and a time
where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes we are far from polished.
Far from pristine.
But that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge a union with purpose,
to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us,
but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true,
that even as we grieved, we grew,
that even as we hurt, we hoped,
that even as we tired, we tried,
that we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat,
but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time,
then victory won’t lie in the blade.
But in all the bridges we’ve made,
that is the promise to glade,
the hill we climb.
If only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth,
in this faith we trust.
For while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption
we feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter.
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert,
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was,
but move to what shall be.
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free.
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation,
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain,
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy,
and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west.
We will rise from the windswept northeast,
where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sunbaked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid,
the new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

In This Place

There’s a poem in this place—
in the footfalls in the halls
in the quiet beat of the seats.
It is here, at the curtain of day,
where America writes a lyric
you must whisper to say.

There’s a poem in this place—
in the heavy grace,
the lined face of this noble building,
collections burned and reborn twice.

There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest chants
tear through the air
like sheets of rain,
where love of the many
swallows hatred of the few.

There’s a poem in Charlottesville
where tiki torches string a ring of flame
tight round the wrist of night
where men so white they gleam blue—
seem like statues
where men heap that long wax burning
ever higher
where Heather Heyer
blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.

There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant
of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising
its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
strutting upward and aglow.

There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas
where streets swell into a nexus
of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
where courage is now so common
that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.

There’s a poem in Los Angeles
yawning wide as the Pacific tide
where a single mother swelters
in a windowless classroom, teaching
black and brown students in Watts
to spell out their thoughts
so her daughter might write
this poem for you.

There’s a lyric in California
where thousands of students march for blocks,
undocumented and unafraid;
where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom
in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.
She knows hope is like a stubborn
ship gripping a dock,
a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer
or knock down a dream.

How could this not be her city
su nación
our country
our America,
our American lyric to write—
a poem by the people, the poor,
the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,
the native, the immigrant,
the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,
the undocumented and undeterred,
the woman, the man, the nonbinary,
the white, the trans,
the ally to all of the above
and more?

Tyrants fear the poet.
Now that we know it
we can’t blow it.
We owe it
to show it
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below it.

Hope—
we must bestow it
like a wick in the poet
so it can grow, lit,
bringing with it
stories to rewrite—
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history written that need not be repeated
a nation composed but not yet completed.

There’s a poem in this place—
a poem in America
a poet in every American
who rewrites this nation, who tells
a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth
to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—
a poet in every American
who sees that our poem penned
doesn’t mean our poem’s end.

There’s a place where this poem dwells—
it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
where we write an American lyric
we are just beginning to tell.