Poem lines and critical appreciation of the poem Close to you

 

 Poem lines

Close to you :

Close to you I have regained my name

My name long hidden beneath the salt of distances

I have regained eyes no longer veiled by fevers.

And you laugh like a flame making holes in the dark

Has given Africa back to me beyond the snows of yesterday

Ten years of my love

And marriage of illusion and wreckage of ideas.

And sleep peopled with alcohol

Ten years and the breath of the world has poured its

Pain upon me

Pain that loads the present with the flavour of

Tomorrows

And makes of love an immeasurable river

Close to you I have regained the memory of my blood

And necklaces of laughter around the days

Days that sparkle with joys renewed.

                                                      -David Diop

 

Critical Appreciation of the poem Close to you by David Diop

                David Mandera Diope was a French West African poet, born on 9^th July 1927.  He was a Senegalese poet known for his contribution to the Negritude Literary Movement.  He started writing poems when he was just 15 year old and his poems appeared in presence African .  His works are seen as a condemnation of colonialism and detest towards Colonial rule.  He produced less than 30 poems that were published in Coups De Pilon in 1956.  The poem ‘Close to You’ by him is also published in Coups De Pilon in revised edition of 1961.  The title Coups De Pilon is translated  from French which means ‘pounding’.  Expectation of freedom and regaining the past tradition is highlighted in the poem. 

                Diope speaks about African and agonies of the tortured people under the control of colonists and expects freedom.   He begins the poem by stating that Close to the native land of freedom, he is able to regain his own identity once when the nation is free the natives will be recognised.  The name of the nation is hidden under the salt of  distances as the colonizers from the distant nation has suppressed them. 

                “ Close to you, I have regained my name

                My name long hidden beneath the salt of distances”

The poet says that the nation has woken up and is recovering from the fever of slavery and to look forward to the freedom.  The light of freedom is visible and it peeps through the dark holes of suppression and slavery.  Beyond the struggles of the past, the poet is in ecstasy that his mother land Africa is being given to him with independence.

                “ And you laugh like a flame making holes in the dark

                Has given Africa back to me beyond the snows of yesterday”

The poet states that ten years of longing and the illusion of the wreckage of ideas he has faced which made him numb as an alcoholic or like people who are tired of trying.  It may be because he was bit always there at Senegal but was in Paris for a certain period where he produced revival poetry.  For the past ten years the natives are suffering as they are suppressed and their wealth being looted by the colonisers.  The poet expresses that the pain they are undergoing now is having a flavour of the freedom which they are going to enjoy soon.

                “ Pain that loads the present with the flavour of tomorrows

                And makes of love an immeasurable river”

The love towards the native nation is like a river which is immeasurable.  The poet here dreams of the freedom and says that he is enjoying the renewed  laughter and joys which were there during the past days,

                “Close to you I have regained the memory of my blood”

He concludes the poem by saying that he has regained his blood that is his own spirit of nationalism. 

                Thus the poem “Close to You” explores the poet’s patriotism towards his country as well as his hatred towards the colonizers.  His protest against the colonial rule is very well-explained in this short poem.