CONTRACT WORKER – ANTONIO JACINTO
I wanted to write you a letter my love,
A letter that would tell of this desire
To see you of this fear of losing you
Of this more than benevolence that I feel
Of this indefinable ill that pursues me
Of this yearning to which I live in total surrender …
I wanted to write you a letter my love
A letter of intimate secrets,
A letter of memories of you,
Of your lips red as henna
Of your hair black as mud
Of your eyes sweet as honey
Of your breast hard as wild orange
Of your lynx gait and of your caresses
Such that I can find no better here …
I wanted to write you a letter my love,
That will recall the days in our haunts
Our nights lost in the long grass that would
Recall the shade falling on us from the plum trees
The moon filtering through the endless palm trees
That would recall the madness of our passion
And the bitterness of our separation …
I wanted to write you a letter my love
that you would not read without sighing
that you will hide from papa Bombo
that you would withhold from mama Keiza
that you would reread without the coldness
of forgetting a letter to which in all Kilombo
no other would stand comparison
I wanted to write you a letter my love
A letter that would be brought to you by the passing wind
A letter that the cashews and coffee trees
The hyenas and buffaloes,
The alligators and grayling could understand
So that if the wind should lose it on the way
The beasts and plants with pity for our sharp suffering
From song to song, lament to lament, gabble to gabble,
Would bring you pure and hot the burning words
The sorrowful words of the
I wanted to write to you letter …
I wanted to write you a wetter
But oh! my love, I cannot understand
Why it is, why, why, why, my dear
That you cannot read
And I – oh the hopelessness –
cannot write.
Analysis
The lusophone poem ‘ Contract Worker’ addresses the issue of love. Antonio Jacinto is an Angolan who serves the colonial government in South Africa. He had no access to visit his family because the colonial government did not permit him. He has no choice than to write this letter to his love whose face he longed to see. Although Jacinto misses his love, he has the fear of losing her to another man because of distance or absence from home. He states this feeling in the sentences of “I wanted to write you a letter my love, a letter that would tell of this desire, to see you of this fear of losing you”.
Jacinto compares the beauty of his love to the pleasures of fruits and natural resources that he cannot find at where he stays. The writer reminds his love about the intimate secrets and memories that they shared together. He highlights the passion they had for each other and how bitter he will feel if distance should separate them. He claims the letter will be so passionate to the extent of evoking the sympathy and seeking the assistance of creatures like trees, animals and the wind in delivering it (the letter) to his love. The messengers of his letter are stated in “a letter that would be brought to you by the passing wind, a letter that the cashews and coffee trees, the hyenas and buffaloes, the alligators and grayling could understand so that if the wind should lose it on the way, the beasts and plants with pity for our sharp suffering from song to song, lament to lament, gabble to gabble, would bring you pure and hot the burning words”. The earnest desire of Jacinto is to make sure his distant lover receives his love letter by hook or crook.
In the last stanza, Jacinto expresses his pain and regret of his inability to write his lovely words to his love who cannot read and understand in the lines of “I wanted to write you a letter but oh! my love, I cannot understand why it is, why, why, why, my dear, that you cannot read and I – oh the hopelessness – cannot write”. This suggests that, love can only move from ideal to real, imagination to practice, feeling to experience and from mere to intimate love when the lovers stay together. Distance and education hinder the development and feeling of Jacinto’s real love. A love without communication, practice and without time to share moments of sweet memories remains an imaginary love and not a true, real and intimate love that the lovers cannot do without.
Credit to MADAM SITSOFE GANU
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
S. D. A. COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
ASOKORE – KOFORIDUA.
