Richard Blanco, the first openly gay,
first Latino and youngest poet to read at a presidential
inauguration, has penned a poem for marriage equality.
Blanco was asked to write the poem by
Freedom to Marry to mark the tenth anniversary of marriage equality
in Massachusetts.
Blanco's Until We Could was
turned into a beautiful and moving video.
The film, directed by David Lowery
(Ain't Them Bodies Saints) and Yen Tan (Pit Stop), is
narrated by actors Robin Wright (House of Cards) and Ben
Foster (Lone Survivor).
“It seemed like the perfect fit
immediately,” Blanco told The
Daily Beast of the project. “It was a cause I believed in
and wanted to be a part of. As the first openly gay inaugural poet,
it felt very inspirational. Love is love, marriage is marriage. In
both cases they come with the good and bad, the great and
dysfunctional.”
The poem and video were the idea of Pete
Spears, a Freedom to Marry volunteer, who said the film was shot with
real couples in and around Austin, Texas.
A middle swath of the poem talks about
the increasing momentum for marriage equality.
“When the fiery kick lines and fires
were set for us by our our founding mother-fathers at Stonewall, we
first spoke defiance. When we paraded glitter, leather, and
rainbows made human, our word became pride down every city
street, saying: Just let us be. But that wasn't enough. Parades
became rallies – bold words on signs and mouths until a man claimed
freedom as another word for marriage, and he said: Let us in,
we said: love is love, proclaimed it into all eyes that would
listen at every door that would open, until noes and maybes
turned into yeses, town by town, city by city, state by
state, understanding us and the woman who dared say enough
until the gavel struck into law what we always knew: Love is the
right to say: I do and I do and I do ...”
(The video is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
Blanco's latest collection of poems,
The
Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood, arrives September
30.