His voice, constrained in the dead forms of classical poetry, such as the
sonnet, does not find the right tonality for the grievances of his people.
Only when he endeavours to describe'-their desperate situation, does his
poetry become more convincing:
The sorrow I feel when I see those people
with sacks on their shoulders, sta very exhausted!...
Sometimes at noon, the sun so hot
and the loads weighing, 0 Holy Virgin!
At the door of the monhes , humbly,
aver .since dawn rises with a suave smile,
wearing ragged sacks,, sadly
there they go peering from beneath their    heavy loads,..
How many, very old already, may be grand-parents,,
ten times, twenty times, from one end to the other
in a single day cross the town!
0 Negroes! How painful it is to live
a whole life under the loads of ethers
and in old age the bread of ehsority,,,
(Carregadores)
*,
Here the complaint is not yet resolved into denunciation and protest, but is
still an impotent and resigned moan, not fully conscious of the meaning of
its suffering. And nevertheless, in this obscure context, poetry, faithful
to its nature, already hints to a dream of freedom, but in as vague and as
faint a way as in a dream2
The jungle makes of you a sinister-desert
Where, alone, at night the beast goes roaring.
Darkness and slavery have here their empire
And you, alien"to time, 0 Africa, sleeping,,,
♦. •
Wake up! Your sleep is deeper than the earth...
Listen to the Voice of progress, that other Nazarene
"Who holds out his hand to you and says - "Africa,get up and go!n
(Surge et Ambula)
II, From the Second World War to the beginning .of the Revolution
"II faut retrouver les pistes de la spontaneite
que les* .civilisations industrielles ont rendue
sauvage,"
In this period of Mozambican history, attempts in the direction of a struggle
. (l) Pejorative term applied to Indian traders,
-25-