“Of the Threads that Connect the Stars” is a short, 14-line narrative poem written in free verse. The story in the poem is drawn from the life of the poet. Martín Espada—or a version of him—is the speaker.

The poem begins with the voice of the first of three generations in the poem. “Did you ever see stars? asked my father with a cackle” (Line 1). The word “cackle” sets the tone for the first stanza. The laughter is harsh; its humor has an edge. The why of it is explained in the following sentence when the speaker reveals he isn’t talking “of the heavens, but the white flash in his head when a fist burst / between his eyes” (Lines 2-3). His father is speaking of his experience. He has been in fights and has known violence.

The reaction to the opening question is laughter. The speaker says, “In Brooklyn, this would cause men and boys to slap / the table with glee” (Lines 3-4). They connect with the question because they live it. Ending the third line with “slap” highlights the verb, holding it suspended for a moment before the fourth line adds the object, “the table,” and the tone, “with glee.” The stars for these men “might be the only heavenly light we’d ever see” (Line 4). That’s the joke. It sounds like the bravado of survivors’ humor.

The second stanza moves to the second generation. The tone loses the touches of edgy humor, becoming more reportorial. The speaker begins with the statement “I never saw stars” (Line 5). He hasn’t seen the stars his father has. He’s been saved from direct violence, but he hasn’t seen the stars in the sky, either. For Martín Espada, the Brooklyn sky is a “tide of smoke rolling over us” (Line 5) from the “factory across the avenue” (Line 6), the “mattresses burning in the junkyard” (Line 6). The stars are further obscured by the “ruins where squatters would sleep” (Line 7). The speaker’s neighborhood is polluted by industry and marked by poverty. It also experiences violence.

The speaker references the “riots of 1966 that kept me / locked in my room like a suspect” (Lines 7-8). In the summer of 1966, tensions between African Americans, Puerto Ricans, whites, and the police erupted for a weekend (“Puerto Rico en mi corazón: The Young Lords, Black Power and Puerto Rican nationalism in the U.S., 1966-1972.” 2006. Centro). While Espada was inside his room, his activist father was outside where he “talked truce on the streets” (Line 8). The speaker hasn’t escaped the systemic inequalities his father was fighting.

The third stanza skips through time and shifts focus to the speaker’s son—the one who can finally see stars. Instead of guns, he knows “the tall barrel of a telescope” (Line 9). He not only looks at the stars, he also “names the galaxies with the numbers and letters of astronomy” (Line 10). Education and opportunity have opened new worlds and new languages.

The speaker celebrates his son’s experience but cannot share it. The father “cannot see what he sees in the telescope, no matter how many eyes I shut” (Line 11). It’s a self-deprecating joke. He can’t focus his eyes through the instrument. On another level, he cannot share his son’s sight because their worlds are different. “I understand a smoking mattress better than the language of galaxies” (Line 12), he says. The ways of seeing the world are shaped by lived experience.

The final stanza ties the generations together once again. “My father saw stars. My son sees stars” (Line 13), and the speaker writes about them. Each has their own language, their own power, but they are united by their shared lineage.

In the conclusion, the poem turns from the skies to the ground below. “The earth rolls beneath / our feet” (Lines 13-14), the speaker says. The years pass and change comes, though, like the earth’s rotation, we may not immediately perceive it. The speaker asserts that progress has been made: “We lurch ahead, and one day we have walked this far” (Line 14).

Change isn’t smooth. The world isn’t necessarily where it should be. We “lurch” forward, and not everyone can see the stars, yet “we have walked this far” (Line 14). It is an achievement—like the transcendent self of the Whitman poem alluded to in the title—worth celebrating.