The Independence (Of Puerto Rico)

English translation from Spanish
we are fiercer than melted snow;
we are bigger than storage cemeteries;
we are more rabid than mired winds;
we are immenser than rivers in sea;
we are wider than wasted tyrannies;
we are more tender than roots with earth;
we are more tender than rain in moss;
we are more tender than downpour’s tremor;
we are stronger than overworked years;
we are braver than stalking anguish;
we are more beautiful than universal monarchies;
we are more jevos than the dreamt good life;
we are richer than stolen ports;
we are more pirates than federal governments;
we are more justice-seeking than armed gods;
we are more more than the minimum
and more more than the most.
we are insularly sufficient.

we owe no one shame.

we owe no one smallness.

they tell us for a whole centuried
and quintuplentaried life that we are
the smallest of the upper,
that we are much of the less
and too little of the more,
but we are more than what they say,
more than what they imagine
and more than, to this day,
we have imagined.

we are home libraries
gathered in a data strike
that miss their bowels
of historied flesh.

we are a latitude of tied belts,
serpents who shed their punishing skins,
make a tape to measure the globe
and know if the world can
expand by opening chests.

we are that calculation that traces today
and hits rock bottom.

we are the fortaleza without spaniards,
the rib cage that expires the old empire
where before they housed crusades.

we are fatal, meaning,
the death of trenches
and the governments that induce them.

we are high-and-mighty on the coast
and humble in the mountains.
we gather coffee and plant it
in the buildings we build,
the children we raise,
and the exponential applications
we complete.

and in all things we are independent,
even in the most colonized hole of our porous fear;
even in the panadería most packed with papers that cover ads;
even in the corrosive act of saying we are only an island;
even that we have done looking each other in the face,
gathering cement blocks,
arming the neighbor’s storage rooms;
even from afar, it has been us
who has gone to the post office
and sent cans and batteries.

don’t fear what you already know.
we’ve spent a lifetime fearing ourselves
while getting robbed by strangers.
look at us. look closely.
don’t you see we are
beauty?