We dream and fight <br />With demons real and imagined; <br />We only live if we dream; <br />We grow from our dreams, <br />From our own La Mancha. <br />Don Quixote is not an imaginary person; <br />He is as real as Alexander the Great; <br />His Dulcinea—as real as Cleopatra, <br /> <br />His windmills are as real as the Library of Alexandria, <br />As real as scores of languages dead and forgotten, <br />As real as Attila, or lost Constantinople. <br />His windmills are lost Ayah Sofias; <br /> <br />His battles had to be won <br />By sleepy emperors <br />Too busy to wage them. <br />We need Don Quixote and La Mancha. <br /> <br />When the whole past is but a phantom, <br />When many a city fell, <br />The idea remained— <br />Stronger than any city, stronger than any empire. <br /> <br />Quixote shines from Lorca and Picasso, <br />From Dally and El Greco, <br />From the gloomy View of Toledo. <br />He was born before Cervantes. <br /> <br />Those in Argentina, Mexico and Peru, <br />Colombia and the Caribbean <br />Bear La Mancha and Quixote in their hearts <br />For he is an ultimate and overlooked Don Juan. <br /> <br />Marquez was not born in Colombia. <br />He was born in Macondo, <br />And his Macondo is his La Mancha. <br />Fuentes and Cortazar are from La Mancha too. <br /> <br />Neruda had his first dream, <br />First meeting with the Moon and the Sun <br />In sunny La Mancha, hiding in his heart <br />Where he learned how to sing like a nightingale. <br /> <br />Don Quixote is not just Don Quixote; <br />La Mancha is not just geography; <br />It is our personal territory— <br />Terra Nostra. <br /> <br />It is not important what happens where; <br />Where we fall or rise, <br />What we conquer or lose, <br />How big or small we are. <br /> <br />All places come and go. <br />History will be erased in the universal purgatory. <br />Dreams are our only geography— <br />Our native land.<br /><br />Dejan Stojanovic<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/don-quixote-6/
