Dear Reader,
A good story invokes a multitude of meanings and interpretations. Cervantes's classic work Don Quixote, inspires artists, filmmakers, poets, and writers worldwide. On my second read-through, I paid particular attention to the character Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s loyal squire and servant. It’s Sancho Panza’s practicality that serves as a direct foil to Don Quixote’s idealism, and it is because of his unwitting loyalty that Don Quixote can continue to indulge in his delusional “enchantment.”
In many ways, Sancho and Don Quixote represent two lovers in a jilted, lopsided relationship. Sancho, ever faithful—Don Quixote, free to pursue his fantasies unabated. This re-imagination of the duo prompted me to write a poem about such a relationship, this time between two lovers, one cleaning up the mess of the other, stuck in an endless cycle of “I’m sorry” and “it’s ok.”
If you haven’t read Cervantes’s masterpiece, I highly recommend you do, but, in the meantime, enjoy a poem based on this classic work.
SANCHO PANZA REVISITED
Like Sancho Panza, she’s caught up in a dream,
the mad ravings of some lunatic’s son,
and playing the part of faithful squire
drags her master home and tucks him into bed.
She’ll do the same thing the next night
and the night after that.
Her fantasy his reality,
the life she imagined a mistaken dream—
sanity and madness an unlikely pair,
though, when you think of it,
better bedfellows were never made.