Page 116 - Demo

2045 Redefining AmericaFor the community of Newtown, Connecticut, where twenty students and six educators lost their lives to a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 14, 2012 Now the bells speak with their tongues of bronze. Now the bells open their mouths of bronze to say: Listen to the bells a world away. Listen to the bell in the ruins of a city where children gathered copper shells like beach glass, and the copper boiled in the foundry, and the bell born in the foundry says: I was born of bullets, but now I singof a world where bullets melt into bells. Listen to the bell in a city where cannons from the armies of the Great War sank into molten metal bubbling like a vat of chocolate, and the many mouths that once spoke the tongue of smoke form the one mouth of a bell that says: I was born of cannons,but now I sing of a world where cannons melt into bells. Listen to the bells in a town with a flagpole on Main Street, a rooster weathervane keeping watch atop the Meeting House, the congregation gathering to sing in times of great silence. Here the bells rock their heads of bronze as if to say: Melt the bullets into bells, melt the bullets into bells. Here the bells raise their heavy heads as if to say: Melt the cannons into bells, melt the cannons into bells. Here the bells sing of a world where weapons crumble deep in the earth, and no one remembers where they were buried. Now the bells pass the word at midnight in the ancient language of bronze, from bell to bell, like ships smuggling news of liberation from island to island, the song rippling through the clouds. Now the bells chime like the muscle beating in every chest, heal the cracks in the bell of every face listening to the bells. The chimes heal the cracks in the bell of the moon. The chimes heal the cracks in the bell of the world. 2013 QUESTIONS Understanding and Interpreting 1. In the first stanza, Mart%u00edn Espada references the Bell of Peace, made from 20,000 bullet cartridges after the 1997 Albanian civil unrest, and the Campana dei Caduti, made from the bronze of World War I cannons. What does it mean to, as Espada suggests, %u201cListen to the bells a world away%u201d (l. 3)? What message do these memorials convey? 2. What does %u201cHeal the Cracks in the Bell of the World%u201d propose? Look especially at the italicized lines as you consider answers to this question. What would it mean to %u201cmelt the bullets into bells%u201d (l. 17)? What is the %u201cbell of the world,%u201d and how is it healed? 510152025 QUESTIONS Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.