How to tell you about this aristocratic word sorcerer with a commoner's eye? [on the 'March on Washington'] How to make you hear our tears as he welcomed our souls and held his heart in our hands? This Martin Luther King man was a 'cande jondo', a deep song of Africa. The South. The Americas. He came toward us with staccato speech and rhythm of the spirit. And his passion entered this American bloodstream. He no longer spoke for himself. Something began to move through him. He levitated language and we wept, laughed, hummed till time stood still. He had summoned the 'duende' the spirit of all of our ancestors who had suffered and yet survived, and did it with dignity and grace and order and beauty. He told us that we had affirmed life, that our eyes had abandoned death, defeat. That our feet were dancing silver. In August 1963, we heard the thunder of angels.
