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This analysis of “The Song of the Women of My Land” by Oumar Farouk Sesay covers the following:

• The poem
• About the poem
• Structure of the poem
• Content Summary
• Content Analysis
• The title of the poem
• Language and Diction
• Mood and tone
• Literary Devices used in the poem
• Themes in the poem

Themes in The Song of the Women of My Land by Oumar Farouk Sesay

Literary Devices Used in The Song of the Women of My Land

The Song of the Women of My Land

(published in “400 Years of Servitude”)

by Oumar Farouk Sesay

Like a sculptor chipping away at bits of wood,
Time chisels away bits of their memory

It strips away lyrics of the song of the women of my land
Leaving only a fading tune echoing the song,
they sang in the forlorn fields
about their lives; songs
of how they ploughed the terrain of their landscape
for memories of lyrics lost in the vast void of time,
in those days when a song beheld their lives;
when servitude cuffed the ankles of their soul,
and dereliction decapitated the epic of their lives.

With a song, they sponged off their anguish,
to behold their collective pain,
to celebrate their gains
give lyrics to the tune of their lives,
cheat the tyranny of time
and commune with the yet unborn
to give meaning to an epoch lost in antiquity,

Yet time strips the lyrics and scars the tune,
leaving a dying song.
Dead!
Like the woman who died long ago,
Leaving the song to tell the story of their lives.

Today the tune roams the forlorn fields
Like their souls looking for lyrics.
To tell the tale of the servitude
of the women of my land
Who ploughed their soil and soul
For a song to sing the story of their lives
The song of the women of my land
left in the memory of the wind.

Now feeding the verses of poets, it echoes in
Wriggling in rhythms and melodies,
Hollering in distant tunes
In places far afield the forlorn fields,
where the song of their lives died.

The stuttering lips of my pen
And the screeching voice of my nib
try to sing the song of the women of my land
In verses far from the theatre of toil
where they left a song that now roams the land
stripped of lyrics like a scorned ghost.
The tune tuning the tenor of my verse
is all that remains of the song of the women of my land
Who labored and died leaving a dying song.

The dirge of their lives!

About the poem

“The Song of the Women of My Land” is written by Oumar Farouk Sesay, a Sierra Leonean writer. He was a resident playwright of Bai Bureh Theatre in the 1980s and wrote for local and international newspapers. “The Song of the Women of My Land’ is one of his notable poems featured in his collection – “400 Years of Servitude”. Little wonder the focus of the poem is the pains endured by rural African women in servitude to a world that did not favour them. Oumar Farouk Sesay is also known for his anthologies of poems and novels.

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Structure of the poem

“The Song of the Women of My Land” is free verse and consists of 46 lines written in 8 stanzas of varying lengths.

Stanza 1 – 2 lines (Lines 1-2)

Stanza 2 – 9 lines (Lines 3-11)

Stanza 3 – 7 lines (Lines 12-18)

Stanza 4 – 5lines (Lines 19-23)

Stanza 5 – 8 lines (Lines 24-31)

Stanza 6 – 5 lines (Lines 32-36)

Stanza 7 – 9 lines (Lines 37-45)

Stanza 8 – 1 line (Line 46)

It has no rhyme scheme nor meter, although there are some internal rhymes that enhance the reading and meaning of the poem. Some internal rhymes in the poem include “sing’ and “song” in Line 39, “the tune tuning the tenor of my verse” (Line 43), “In places far afield the forlorn fields,” (Line 35), and “Who ploughed their soil and soul / For a song to sing the story of their lives” (Lines 28-29).

In this poem, Oumar Farouk Sesay idealizes the rural life of the women of his land, their labour, and the songs they sang while they toiled. Therefore, the poem can be classified as a pastoral poem.

Content Summary

The poet struggles to remember the songs sung by the women of his land in the days of old, when they struggled and labored in the fields. The lyrics of the song of these ancestors was fading with passing time, only the tunes remain, and the memories of the women’s servitude and voices of hope as they sang.

This song connected the women, lent them strength as they labored, and fueled their survival of the hardship they faced. It told the stories of their lives (Lines 5-6, 23, and 29), of their servitude and the pains they endured (Lines 7, 9-11), and cleansed their soul of their suffering and anguish and celebrated their gains (Lines 12-14). Lastly, the song served as their connection to the next generation, telling stories, preserving history, and teaching about life (Lines 16-18).

Although these women are long gone from the world, the tune they sang still echoes in the minds of people, and artists like the poet try to recapture the song. However, as the writer notes, the lyrics have faded with time, and what he has to do is write a dirge, something to remember them by.

(Lines 37-41)

“The stuttering lips of my pen
And the screeching voice of my nib
try to sing the song of the women of my land
In verses far from the theatre of toil
where they left a song that now roams the land”

Content Analysis

The poem is a dirge written in honour of the women of the land (a village in Sierra Leone). It opens with a simile, the poet compares the sculptor chipping away at bits of wood to make his master piece to time chiseling away bits of the memory of the women discussed in the poem. The first line builds the attention of the reader towards something artistic and colourful, only for the second line to show that it is rather a sad one, albeit executed with similar mastery.

This song served multiple purposes:

1. It was a way for the women of old in the land to cope with their pain brought about by servitude and subjugation by men and society. They sang to cleanse their soul of their sorrow and focus on their gains (Lines 12-14).

“With a song, they sponged off their anguish,
to behold their collective pain,
to celebrate their gains”

2. It told the story of their lives – the women who have gone ahead of them in the same situation and the lives of the ones who sang as they labored (Lines 5-7).

“they sang in the forlorn fields
about their lives; songs
of how they ploughed the terrain of their landscape”

3. This song was the women’s way of preserving the story and memory of what they endured (Lines 8-11)

“for memories of lyrics lost in the vast void of time,
in those days when a song beheld their lives;
when servitude cuffed the ankles of their soul,
and dereliction decapitated the epic of their lives.”

In time, the song had become a symbol, a historical knowledge of the toil of women in the fields in times past.

4. With the song, these women are connected with the new generation. It is clear that the generation gap created the time that has erased the lyrics – now poets write verses to echo the tune of the song the women sung (Stanza 6 and Stanza 3).

(Lines 16-18)

“cheat the tyranny of time
and commune with the yet unborn
to give meaning to an epoch lost in antiquity,”

5. Sesay also tries to capture this song in this poem, but like the others, he fails to have the right words, and the lyrics have long been forgotten. Therefore, he resorts to work with the tune that still echoed, doing his best to create a dirge (Line 46).

“The song” is a metaphor as it captures the events surrounding the women in history, how they toiled in the “forlorn fields”, how they hoped and persevered despite the unfavourable situation they had to endure. It is also a metaphor for the creative works the lives of the women has inspired way after they had passed from this life. The significance of the song remains so strong that artists continue to compose songs to mourn the women’s plight and demise.

Time, the major cause of the loss of the song, has taken its toll, slowly, but surely, eating away the lyrics of the song and the memory of the women who sang the song. Now, all that is left is the tune. The writer describes the tune as wandering the “forlorn fields” in search of someone who might hear and appreciate it (Line 24). Luckily, some people still do.

Also, the speaker admits that the dying song, although dead (Lines 20-21), remains alive just as a tune roaming the “forlorn field” (Line 24).

The song is dead just like the women who sang it. This song told the story of their lives, but now, it is dead and being forgotten just like the women who sang it (lines 20-23). However, the tune continues to remind people of the women seeking lyrics to carry on the message.

Following the tune of the song, which has endured, those who hear and appreciate it try to recreate the song, and although they fail, they create something inspired by the tune, something that reflects the plight of the women of old who sang the song in the “forlorn fields” (Stanza 6, Lines 32-36). It is to this category of people that the poet belongs. He too tries to sing the song with his pen, albeit far from the times the song was sung, far from the toil that created the tune, yet the tune was still tuning the verses he wrote. In the end, all he got was a dirge, telling of the lives of the women of his land who sang the song in the “forlorn fields”.

Title of the poem

The title draws the audience in, expecting a melodious song or at least the lyrics of a song that is a major part of the tradition of the land of the writer, or a song about women of that land. However, it does not give any of these. Rather, it points to the story behind the song sung by the women of the land and what has become of the song over time.

It serves as a social commentary on the forgotten struggles of rural African women of Sierra Leone, and the choice of words that make up the title points to the African tradition of storytelling.

“Song”, a major part of African oral traditions that is often used to pass messages, tell historical tales, and for relaxation and fun, is used here to depict the different aspects and roles of the song sung by the women of the land.

“The women of the land” were captured in the title to clarify that the poem is about a specific group of people, and this song is a specific song about or sung by these people. The poignant nature of the title stirs the heart towards a heroic act, a form often preserved through time in epics.

However, the expectations the title raises in the audience are not quite met by the content. A song albeit, but not an exciting one. Rather, it is a lament about a group of unsung heroes whose stories were fading, the song was dying, the tune was fading, and the lyrics were forgotten.

Language and Diction

The language is modern, depicting the perception of the new generation of the song sung by women of old as they toiled in the forlorn fields.  The diction is precise, carefully chosen to pass the message of the song and the situation as the lyrics fade. For instance, to describe the labour of the women who sang the song, words and expressions like “servitude”, “forlorn fields”, and “ploughed soil and soul” were used. To express the song as a tool to calm the women’s suffering, the expression “sponge off their anguish” was used.

Despite the poem speaking about an event of old and its place in the present, the language is generally accessible, and the thoughts expressed in the poem can easily be understood.

Mood and tone

Although the mood of the poem is somber, the tone is reverential despite the speaker’s obvious disappointment that he cannot remember the words sung in the songs of the women of old. It is obvious that he reveres their spirit, resilience, collaboration, and doggedness.

The sadness in the poem drives readers to contemplate the situation of the women spoken of and the place of the speaker in modern times trying to recreate or preserve this memory as part of the people’s history.

Analysis by Chinyere Nwosu

February 2026