Citation Presented by Roberto Castillo
Sandoval, Associate Professor of Spanish
Congratulations
to you, Class of 2004. What an honor it is to speak to you
this morning.
I traveled to Cuba for an international
writers' conference in the late 1970s. After I had a read
a paper to an appreciative audience some of the officials
asked me if I wanted anything. I said, "Yes, I would
like to meet the great poet Nicolas Guillen." They stared
at me, said he wasn't feeling well, said they'd try to arrange
it two hours later. They gathered me up and as I entered his
office, he was standing in the middle of the room, feet planted
on Cuban earth, legs no longer strong but arms strong like
Elizabeth Kappa's black women's arms, and he said, "Sonia,
Sonia Sanchez, como Langston Hughes? Como Langston Hughes?"
And I smiled a smile of recognition, folded myself into his
arms, and he hugged me so hard that I couldn't breathe and
I thought "Hold it, I didn't come all this way to die
in Cuba." And then I realized that if I just stopped
struggling, if I just leaned into his breath I would be all
right. And I leaned into his breath, and we began to breathe
as one. That is what Langston Hughes' poetry taught us, the
necessity to learn how to lean into each other's breath and
breathe as one.
So listen, gentle persons, I come
to you with two voices: the voice of the praiser, praising
these young graduates, and I come to you with the voice of
the poet, a weaver of words threading silver and gold into
our veins. So listen, gentle men, gentle women, pull your
hearts out of your armpits, get your tuxedoes out of mothballs,
put your long red dress on, girls, and snap your breasts into
place, as we go sailing on tongues, loving, living, learning
to speak without a crutch. Someone said, "There is a
dance in each one of us." I would say there is also moon,
prayer, rain, light, ash, and river, a river of castanets
feeling the pulse of this graduating class, you brothers,
you sisters. Our practicing American saints must finally break
into a dance of butterflies, winging in and out of our American
dream, hanging bamboo laughter, lighting our campuses, our
hallways, our streets, our eyes, our memories against peacock
catastrophes.
This is a poem about hands, I think,
you frontier men and women whose hands will discover life
through helping the uninitiated, hands wrapped in wrists as
you reach out to humankind. And I hold out my hands to you
on this graduation day, my sisters, my brothers, these hands
with no eyes, these hands with no nostrils, these hands with
no ears. Now I dress them up like a musician so they can see
you home, so they can accompany you as you move, surrounded
by the voices of your ancestors as you move across the scent
of tongues. What to say to you now, Paul, Alicia, John, Anne
Marie, Yasmine, Jenny, Purti, Rachel, Frank, in the soft morning
air, as the world holds us all in a single death, what song
to sing to you, Kira, Raina, Jose, Charlotte, Karen, Stephanie,
Tom, Shameeka, Oosma, Stefan, we sing, "Will you let
me in today, America? It is time for young words, ideas, young
visions." We sing, "Today is Sunday. We have passed
this way for four years on our way home to you. We have walked
a thousand midnights, and our eyes are anointed with indigo.
We sing A-men, A-men, A-woman, A-woman."
This is a poem about students,
you fun-loving women and men, you flint-and-feathered men,
women, you country and cathedral men, women, with hearts in
your mouths singing down the wind and becoming the wind, tearing
the wings off war, guns, assassinations, folding yourselves
in the music of a Spanish guitar, an ever-strumming piece,
justice, life life life life. This is a poem, you'll say "I
know." This is a poem, you'll all say, "I know."
It's about that great genius, W.E.B. DuBois, who said, "What
shall the end be? The world, old and fearful things, war and
wealth, murder and luxury, or shall it be a new thing, a new
peace, a new democracy of all races: a just humanity of equal
men and women?"
This is a poem about a new
time, about the truth in our children's eyes, as we wash the
feet of our country, as we sanitize the walls of the world
with peace, racial, social, economic, sexual justice, as we
anoint our hands with light, as we walk toward ourselves and
find others. This is a poem with no jet propel pain, no irrelevant
death squads, just a memory of hands, a memory of eyes calling
out, your eyes opening up the world as you create dreams,
as you go out through these doors textured by colors, as the
day disrobes in prayer. Today is your day, my sisters, my
brothers. Come, you and I, let us go into the world praising
ourselves, elaborating a better physics for the universe,
carrying black earth from one plane to another, closing this
plant in our eyes with information, passion, hope, and peace,
You, my sisters, my brothers, must become small miracles,
push down the wind, enter the slow bloodstream of America,
shake the rust from your eyes, go floor by floor, window by
window, and clean faces will rise from the dust, become new
brides and bridegrooms among chains, men and women coming
for their inheritance, and you must challenge us, your parents,
your elders, to catch up with our own breaths, to breathe
in Latinos, Native Americans, Jews, gays, Muslims, Asians,
whites, lesbians, blacks, Chicanos, to gather up our rainbow-colored
skins in peace and racial justice, I say, I say, we have,
we have, I say, I say, we have, we have become life, life,
light, life life life life light, you'll say "I know,
" you'll all say "I know," you'll say "I
know" so I say to you, new graduates, on this taffeta
day, dropping blue/white sapphires, inaugurate across the
sound of your words not symbols or sirrahs, not peepholes
or posturing, not lesions and lechery. Inaugurate a new day,
a new way for all people. Inaugurate like new men and women
should, coming out of yourselves towards peace and racial
and sexual and economic and social justice. So come with yourselves,
singing life, singing eyes, singing hands, alarming the death-singers
that we have come to celebrate life until we become seeing
men and women. Inaugurate a new way of breathing for the world,
a new way of breathing for the world, and it will get better.
It'll get better because of you. Thank you.
