The Immigrant's Song

Doshi’s “The Immigrant's Song” is a free verse poem written with no metrical pattern or rhyme scheme, although some end rhymes occur. The poem, while appearing to be divided into two stanzas, functions as a single unit with one italicized word (“disappeared,” Line 14) as a crux or pivot point partway through the poem. “The Immigrant's Song” is musical, using anaphora—the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a sentence—to drive the poem forward (“Let us not,” Line 1, Line 4, Line 11, etc.).

Many of the lines in the poem function as commands. For instance, the speaker of the poem begins by commanding the audience (presumably an audience of fellow immigrants) not to speak of the past. This is immediately contradicted as the poem dives into vibrant sensory memories of the lost homeland (represented by coffee beans, white headscarves hung to dry on the line, singing birds, and the shape of baobab leaves). The poem opens citing nearly every sense—smell, sight, sound, and touch—painting a picture of fragrant, vibrant memories of which the speaker says must not be spoken.

In Line 11, the poem turns from pleasant, welcoming memories to the memory of people disappearing: men “stolen from their beds at night” (Line 12). Here, the poem dramatically pivots from an idyllic memory to a dark, nightmarish truth: People were forcefully taken from their homes. When the speaker says, “Let us not say the word / disappeared” (Lines 13-14), the poem breaks in form. The offset word, “disappeared” (Line 14), is italicized and stands alone on the line. The word resembles those who were taken, how alone they must have felt, stolen from their beds in the middle of the night, removed from their homes and families.

In Line 15, the poem repeats the anaphoric “Let us not” (Line 15), but this time, instead of asking the audience not to speak, the speaker asks the audience not to remember. What follows is a single sensory detail (“the first smell of rain,” [Line 15]). Then, the speaker changes course and asks the audience to speak: “Let us speak of our lives now,” (Line 16). But they don’t ask the audience to speak of the past; instead, they ask the audience to speak of their life now. Following this command is a waterfall of details of what it means to live in a different world—a world away from the speaker’s homeland, a world of the immigrant. The speaker asks the audience to turn away from where they once lived, from the “war and abandonment” (Line 22), and to not “burden” (Line 21) those in the new country with harrowing, death-filled stories of the past.

The poem makes the argument that once in the new country (presumably America or a country in the West), the country from which the speaker (and other immigrants) came should fall away. Speaking of and thinking about the past cannot change anything, nor bring back the dead. The new country is a way forward for “grandchildren” (Line 28) and a way beyond the war and death of the country they left.

In Line 32, the poem returns to its opening, remembering the same, happy memories of the coffee beans, the white laundry, and houses. The poem leaps into simile and lyricism as the speaker describes floating a pleasant memory “like a paper boat down a river” (Line 36). This releasing of the memory is a celebration of it. In the final line, the memory—rather than floating down the river and becoming lost—whispers its story to all of nature. The immigrant’s story (the immigrant's past) eternally lives in the world. Their story, like the wind, is everywhere. Likewise, the immigrants’ past is always with them, regardless whether they’ve left their country.