The Immigrant's Song

In “The Immigrant’s Song,” memory works as a motif, as it is returned to several times throughout the poem. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker recalls their home country in specific detail: the smell of “coffee beans [filling] the morning,” (Line 2) and “the noise of those nameless birds,” (Line 9). The first 10 lines are full of the speaker’s memories of what it was like to live in their home country. These memories are pleasant and inviting. However, such memories are also fragmented by the memory of the men who were stolen in the night from their beds. Even though these memories are silenced, they are not forgotten. In Line 31, when friends in the new country say, “Tell us about it,” (Line 31), the memories return, flooding back in the exact way they came at the start of the poem. Details are repeated, such as the coffee bean scent and the sky.

In Line 35, memory becomes more than itself; it transforms into something that the immigrant can position and release: “You might set your memory afloat / like a paper boat down a river” (Lines 35-36). The memories held within the mind are suddenly released into the natural world—the water, the trees, the leaves, the wind.