Richard Blanco Reads at U.S. Embassy in Cuba

Richard Blanco is no stranger to poetry assignments, having already penned "One Today" for president Obama's second inauguration. Now he's back with a new assignment: to write a new poem to commemorate the re-opening of the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba. At NPR, Robert Siegel spoke to Blanco about the poem.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Tomorrow, when the U.S. Embassy in Havana formally reopens, Richard Blanco will read a poem he wrote for that occasion. Blanco was born to a Cuban exile family and was raised in Miami. He was also the inaugural poet at President Obama's second inauguration. Richard Blanco joined us today from Miami before he left for Havana, and I asked him how he felt about this assignment.

RICHARD BLANCO: In some ways, this was one of the easiest and one of the hardest. And part of it, I think there's a lot of - more political complexities involved, and it's a lot closer to me. But the inspiration that first came to me was this idea of those 90 miles that everyone always sort of talks about that's almost at this point cliche - you know, the 90 miles between these two countries that might as well be 9,000 miles. So I started thinking about that and how to make that something not about separation, but about unification. And so it's the sea that separates us, but it's also the sea that unites us.

SIEGEL: These are images that - I know the poem is under strict wraps until tomorrow, but you're giving us a taste of some of the images that you invoke?

BLANCO: Well, the title is "Matters Of The Sea" or "Cosas Del Mar," which I love in Spanish. To give you just maybe the first line - I think it's OK. I'll do it. I'll do it for you, Robert.

SIEGEL: You heard it first.

BLANCO: (Reading) The sea doesn't matter. What matters is this - that we all belong to the sea between us.

So you can see where the poem might take off from there. (Laughter).

Read on, or better yet, give the interview a listen at NPR. And watch below for the poem.