Poem with lines from Martín Espada

Here we are, years after trying
to give shape to our desires—

Here we are in the middle of the room,
and that woman on the internet is singing

in praise of the uncluttered, hugging needle-
point pillows to her bosom before throwing 

them away.  Unloved or unlovely, she says you 
can hire one of her certified consultants to help 

tidy your home for a fee. But it's the journalist
on the late night show I can't stop thinking about—

how she held up both arms as if locked arm-in-arm 
with another, how she talked of what it means to hold 

the line, not give in to darkness after darkness dropping 
around us like bombs every day. How we should be careful 

not to surrender our birthright to that dream republic 
where we won't be sad there will be more books than we 

could ever finish reading and where, looking up, we might
grab a poem/ fluttering from the sky,/ blinded by weeping.