I Was My Own Route

I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life;
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows,
and my feet level on the promissory earth
would not accept walking backwards
and went forward, forward,
mocking the ashes to reach the kiss
of new paths.

At each advancing step on my route forward
my back was ripped by the desperate flapping wings
of the old guard.

But the branch was unpinned forever,
and at each new whiplash my look
separated more and more and more from the distant
familiar horizons;
and my face took the expansion that came from within,
the defined expression that hinted at a feeling
of intimate liberation;
a feeling that surged
from the balance between my life
and the truth of the kiss of the new paths.

Already my course now set in the present,
I felt myself a blossom of all the soils of the earth,
of the soils without history,
of the soils without a future,
of the soil always soil without edges
of all the men and all the epochs.

And I was all in me as was life in me……

I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life;
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows;
when the heralds announced me
at the regal parade of the old guard,
the desire to follow men warped in me,
and the homage was left waiting for me……

GLOSSARY

promissory (adj.): containing or conveying a promise
whiplash (n.): a blow with a whip
epochs (n.): periods of time in history or a person’s life, especially the ones marked by important events of special characteristics
regal (adj.): of, like or fit for a king or queen; royal
warped (adj.): twisted out of normal or natural shape; strange and unpleasant
homage (n.): things said or done to show great respect

Summary plus Interpretation of the Poem

The poem “I was My Own Route” by Julia de Burgos, a Puerto Rican poet, is about a woman’s breakaway from the past traditions of patriarchal ideology in order to assert her own identity as a free woman.

The form of the poem also suggests some kind of breakaway from the past tradition as it is not written following some fixed metrical pattern or rhyme scheme, but is written in free verse.

The speaker woman in the poem says that when she wanted to be like men wanted her to be, confirming to the expectation of the patriarchal society, it was just like playing hide and seek with her own being. Sometimes she felt having her identity, but other times she felt it lost. So, refusing to walk backwards along the same old traditional path where all the women down the history have walked, she strived to move forward carving her own route.

But moving forward along the new path of her own was not easy. She was obstructed and tortured by the old guard of patriarchal ideals. However, persistent in her search for her own identity, she kept moving forward in her new path which brought a satisfying feeling of intimate liberation.

Thus, her journey is of the present, and not of the past. And detaching herself from the patriarchal ideals, she keeps moving forward within herself asserting her self-identity as a free woman and discovering an exhilarating feeling of liberation.