If You Want to Know Me
-Noémia de Sousa
If you want to
know who I am,
Examine with
careful eyes
That piece of
black wood
Which an
unknown Maconde brother
With inspired
hands
Carved and
worked
In distant
lands to the North.
Ah, she is who
I am:
Empty eye
sockets despairing of possessing life
A mouth
slashed with wounds of anguish
Raised as
though to implore and threaten
Body tattooed
with visible and invisible scars
By the hard
whips of slavery
Tortured and
magnificent,
Proud and
mystical,
Africa from head
to toe,
-ah, she is
who I am!
If you want to
understand me
Come and bend
over my African soul,
In the groans
of the Negroes on the docks
In the
frenzied dances of the Chopes
In the
rebelliousness of the Shaganas
In the strange
melancholy evaporating
From a native
song, into the night …
And ask me
nothing more
If you really
wish to know me…
For I am no
more than a shell of flesh
In which the
revolt of Africa congealed
Its cry
swollen with hope
About the Poet:
Noémia de Sousa
(aka Vera Micaia) was born in 1927 in Maputo,
Mozambique. She lived in Lisbon working as a translator from 1951 to
1964 and then she left for Paris where she worked for the local consulate of
Morocco. She went back to Lisbon in 1975 and became member of the ANOP. In the early years
of the liberation struggle she was very active. She later left and lived in exile. Noemia's background was Portuguese and Bantu and in
much of her poetry she explores the idea of Africa and her
heritage.
Her poem below is phenomenal. It’s angry and inspired and that final stanza—where she proffers her body as a medium for Africa’s struggle for freedom--wow, powerful. And she ends her poem without a period, perhaps because her last word is ‘hope’ and what is more hopeful than an undefined end?
Her poem below is phenomenal. It’s angry and inspired and that final stanza—where she proffers her body as a medium for Africa’s struggle for freedom--wow, powerful. And she ends her poem without a period, perhaps because her last word is ‘hope’ and what is more hopeful than an undefined end?
Essay
If you want to know me, by Noemia De
Souza, has ruefully used literary devices. It is seen to have a mysterious and
carefree title. Only after reading the poem will one realize and understand the
depth of the feelings that have been expressed in the poem. That is where the
power of the poem lays, in its words, images of wounds, untold stories and so
on. She is seen to have written this poem in defense of the colonization of
Africa and oppression. It portrays the physiological and psychological impact
of colonization. It also showcases the struggle for cultural and political
autonomy along with hybridity.
In the beginning of the poem, she
establishes her lost identity due to colonization and uses the image of “empty
sockets”. The eye is one part of the body that best expresses emotions and that
very part itself is seen b devoid of its function/life. She is unable to see
her past experiences and life and is now blind to it but despairs her present
life. She goes on to tell us the harsh past experiences and marks that she has
to live with for the rest of her life. The marks all over her body seem like
tattoos that last forever leaving marks of slavery, which will always be part
of her and he life no matter what. She uses language as a device to protest
against slavery and gain liberation. Her usage of words like magnificent and
torture together, beautiful and marred shows her resistance and only form of
voicing her opinions.
She proudly goes on to say “Africa from head
and foot and this is what I am”. The colonization, slavery, all forms of violence,
abuse, every single experience that she has ever gone through is what gives her
identity. Even though it has distorted her life to a great extent, she still
proudly believed in liberating her country and also for being an African. This
powerful poem has well described and contributed to the identities of all
Africans, created a bond against the hegemonic colonizer.
