This one is called They Shall Not Pass
and this is about an ordinary Joe who
in the 30s, who decides to sign up,
fight in the Spanish Civil War, and his father
had been a member of them, the Labor movement and everything.
It's called They Shall Not Pass.
Above me the sky is all Atlantic and I
taste vinegar salt and those hot yellow
peppers Natividad used to eat with tamales and beer,
and the sweat above her lip, I can taste that too.
And I have to remind myself why I
left Mexico, why I'm dying here in Madrid
when I should be standing, thumbs hooked in my belt loops,
a Lucky Strike caught in the corner of my mouth.
I was a wobbly like my father, and like him
I always bought two drinks,
one for myself, and one for the ghost of universal brotherhood,
with his tattered suitcase, checkered tie, and a thirst
for handshakes, and hammers,
always leaning at the bar when I'd arrive, with his Joe,
buy me a drink, just one more.
He was in Veracruz the night I left.
He stood on a deck with me before I sail,
squinting at the dock, pointing out the ones who were his,
while I stood there empty of everything but what I believed:
that your brother was your brother,
and you had to spare a dime.
That when you went down the next man would stand up,
hand in his pocket; that there were
angels who walked among the honored dead
carrying red sickles; that Joe Stalin sat like old King
Cole, top of the world,
And I'd sit next to him some day with the back pay of a thousand
years in my own hands.
I had a heart like a goddamn sponge.
You could fill me with slogans, with songs, and marches,
with dead men like sunshine.
He was next to me when he split up the middle, out of luck, out
of dimes; when there was terror no one told me existed:
betrayers, idealists; hysterical,
and uneven fighters.
Only this: they shall not pass.
I said it over and over to myself
as we defended the University of Madrid,
even as I took the slow glide down,
my blood like thick bolts of cloth hitting the ground
as I fell, while the layers of ice and ash
floated down from kingdom come.
A chrome ship slides across the sky's smooth surface,
and Franco himself lifts the Stars and Stripes sail.
My whole face is numb.
I wanted to hit the coast of Spain
like a fist ramming an old man's belly,
but instead found what's his name
in the first bar I stepped into, wearing a St Patrick's Day
smile: cold sober, Joe, he said, and he
spat on the sawdust floor.
I'm my own man,
first time in years, you should try it.
Then he told me, a man can kill without hate,
that that's how it's done.
That Jesus Christ is the bullet that makes everything right.
But it doesn't matter now that the glorious perfumed air
is filled with butterflies which have men's faces, men's feet.
Now that the cocoon of flesh that held me splits apart
and I step left, right, left and what's his name
swaggers head of the line, and his voice floats over us
like the Holy Ghost:
Victory, friends, brothers, as we match all in a row
into the motionless sea.
[APPLAUSE]
I heard MacArthur on a tape once it was probably on that Lowell
Thomas show, I don't remember the name of it,
but it was like some speech, West Point or something
and it was so ghostly.
It was like honor, glory, country,
but it was so disembodied.
I always hear that voice when I say victory, friends, brothers.