We dream and fight
With demons real and imagined;
We only live if we dream;
We grow from our dreams,
From our own La Mancha.
Don Quixote is not an imaginary person;
He is as real as Alexander the Great;
His Dulcinea—as real as Cleopatra,
His windmills are as real as the Library of Alexandria,
As real as scores of languages dead and forgotten,
As real as Attila, or lost Constantinople.
His windmills are lost Ayah Sofias;
His battles had to be won
By sleepy emperors
Too busy to wage them.
We need Don Quixote and La Mancha.
When the whole past is but a phantom,
When many a city fell,
The idea remained—
Stronger than any city, stronger than any empire.
Quixote shines from Lorca and Picasso,
From Dali and El Greco,
From the gloomy View of Toledo.
He was born before Cervantes.
Those in Argentina, Mexico and Peru,
Colombia and the Caribbean
Bear La Mancha and Quixote in their hearts
For he is an ultimate and overlooked Don Juan.
Marquez was not born in Colombia.
He was born in Macondo,
And his Macondo is his La Mancha.
Fuentes and Cortazar are from La Mancha too.
Neruda had his first dream,
First meeting with the Moon and the Sun
In sunny La Mancha, hiding in his heart
Where he learned how to sing like a nightingale.
Don Quixote is not just Don Quixote;
La Mancha is not just geography;
It is our personal territory—
It is not important what happens where;
Where we fall or rise,
What we conquer or lose,
How big or small we are.
All places come and go.
History will be erased in the universal purgatory.
Dreams are our only geography—
Our native land.
Read this poem in other languages
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
Comments about this poem (Don Quixote by Dejan Stojanovic )
(4 April 1928 - 28 May 2014)
(March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963)
(12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973)
(1 February 1902 – 22 May 1967)
(16 August 1920 – 9 March 1994)
(28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827)
Rainer Maria Rilke
(4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926)
(10 December 1830 – 15 May 1886)
(30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)
Edgar Allan Poe
(19 January 1809 - 7 October 1849)
- The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
- Still I Rise, Maya Angelou
- If You Forget Me, Pablo Neruda
- To an Athlete Dying Young, Alfred Edward Housman
- The Tiger, William Blake
- Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas
- Fire and Ice, Robert Frost
- Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe
- Dreams, Langston Hughes
- No Man Is An Island, John Donne
Poem of the Day
- Truth, Please, Sandra Feldman
- can I be..., Ganesh Veeraraghavan
- As You Laid There, GJG Elton
- At the market..., Ganesh Veeraraghavan
- Below, Frank Avon
- God's own..., Ganesh Veeraraghavan
- 2 Fast And The Furious, Mark Harper
- midnight dream, Cee Bea
- know you are there...., Ganesh Veeraraghavan
- You Are Your Wish, Gbolagade Taiwo