Love your Enemy
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| Yusef Iman |
brought here in slave ships and pitched overboard.
Love your enemy
language taken away, culture taken away
Love your enemy
work from sun up to sun down
Love your enemy
Last hired first fired
Love your enemy
Rape your mother
Love your enemy
Lynch your father
Love your enemy
Bomb your churches
Love your enemy
Kill your children
Love your enemy
Forced to fight his Wars
Love your enemy
Pay the highest rent
Love your enemy
Sell you rotten food
Love your enemy
Forced to live in slums
Love your enemy
Dilapidated schools
Love your enemy
Puts you in jail
Love your enemy
Bitten by dogs
Love your enemy
Water hose you down
Love your enemy
Love,
Love,
Love,
Love,
Love, for everybody else,
but when will we love ourselves???????
From: Something Black, Copyright 1966 by Yusef Iman
After reading all the poems from the selection provided, I decided to concentrate on this one, which is a 38-line poem written in the third person and with a statement/ answer format. As it uses accessible language, this poem is easily as well as quickly read.
The lines stating activities that are far from human followed by a strong imperative statement - love your enemy - made me experience a weird feeling at first because I was not able to understand the message behind. Then, I felt pity for the oppressed since it seems to me that he is trying to bear his real life without forgetting what the Bible says.
A slave and the Bible were the two images this poem evoked. While I imagined the former coping with the unavoidable situation of being under his master's will, I could clearly see the Bible open with the statement "love your enemy" written in it. Both images together reflect the contradiction between what the Bible teaches and what happened to slaves before slavery was abolished.
The tune this poem suggests is similar to the Responsorial Psalm done after the First Reading in mass.
The final message of this poem is that we are taught to love others either friends or enemies so much that we forget about how self- love feels.
I think this poem is thematically related to "The Lagoon" and to "Wide Sargasso Sea" since both Arsat and Antoinette are the oppressed.
At the top of this post I included the link so that you can have access to the Glog I have prepared and below there is a brief comment justifying my choinces.
While the pictures that surround the central image represent some of the dehumanising activities mentioned by the poem, the moving arrows departing from these pictures point to the centre where I placed the imperative statement taken from the Bible - "Love your Enemy", which emphasises the several times the oppressed repeats such a powerful claim. Regarding the wall chosen, it is not of a definite colour, which symbolises the weird feeling this poem made me experience when I first read it. The audio is a love hymn and I decided to include it because it cam up while I was searching for further information about this poem.
At the bottom of the Glog is the final message with the same rhetorical question used by Yusef Iman, which invites the reader to think about self-love.
I hope you can enjoy the interpretation of this poem as I did.
Remarkable realisation of the task! Your use of multimedia truly enhances the interpretation provided, and you have successfully lined different texts covered during the year.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why you state the poem is written in the third person. Practically all the verbs appear as if they were in the imperative, though it would be interesting to consider which is the implied subject for the different kinds of actions mentioned (I mean in addition to "love", which you have addressed)
Sorry,I should have not included that. I should have said that the use of the pronoun "your" emphasises the passiveness of the oppressed in the negative actions mentioned as well as what the
ReplyDeleteBible teaches. The slave is quoting the Bible textually.
Thank you for your comment, I feel proud of what I have learnt to do with technology this year!
Of course you should feel proud! You have made some remarkable achievements!
ReplyDeleteAnd the point about the verbs was a good one, though underdeveloped. Most of the verbs show ellipsis of the subject. "They", or the white man, is attributed verbs of violent action (rape, lynch, bomb, kill, etc). "You", or the black man often passive voice (brought, forced, bitten). The fact that we need as readers to replace the missing subject, in my view, highlights the social criticism.
Hello Yusef Iman is my family member and that is not his picture. I am not sure who that is. His picture can be found here: https://aaregistry.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/yusef-iman-271x300.jpg
ReplyDelete