You, If No One Else

by Tino Villanueva

Listen, you
who transformed your anguish
into healthy awareness,
put your voice
where your memory is.
You who swallowed
the afternoon dust,
defend everything you understand
with words.
You, if no one else,
will condemn with your tongue
the erosion each disappointment brings.

You, who saw the images
of disgust growing,
will understand how time
devours the destitute;
you, who gave yourself
your own commandments,
know better than anyone
why you turned your back
on your town's toughest limits.

Don't hush,
don't throw away
the most persistent truth,
as our hard-headed brethren
sometimes do.
Remember well
what your life was like; cloudiness,
and slick mud
after a drizzle;
flimsy windows the wind
kept rattling
in winter, and that
unheated slab dwelling
where coldness crawled
up in your clothes.

Tell how you were able to come
to this point, to unbar
History's doors
to see your early years,
your people, the others.
Name the way
rebellion's calm spirit has served you,
and how you came
to unlearn the lessons
of that teacher,
your land's omnipotent defiler.

Tino Villanueva, "You, If  No One Else" from Chronicle of My Worst Years. Copyright © 1994 by Tino Villanueva.

I chose to write about this poem first because I am at a point in my own life where I am questioning ideas and beliefs that, up until this point, I thought were truth. Now that I'm not sure anymore, I am trying to become more self-aware and identify what I do and don't believe anymore.

One of the first things that stands out about this poem is the form. Although the sentences form complete thoughts, they are broken up into multiple lines. This gives the impression that the speaker's thoughts are also broken up, as if the speaker is unsure or conflicted about the ideas he or she is conveying. Which makes sense, because the overall tone of the poem is one of contradiction and confusion.

The speaker never directly states what the message of the poem is. However, there seem to be a couple themes, centering around self-awareness and determining truth even when what we consider to be truth isn't a commonly held belief. To convey these ideas, the author uses descriptive imagery such as 'most persistent truth' and 'rebellion's calm spirit.' The first phrase might suggest , while the second implies that things are not necessarily what they appear to be. After all, rebellion is rarely seen as a calm thing, but in this case the speaker is asking his reader to think of the ways rebellion has been a good thing.

The author's word choice further supports the idea of rebelling against commonly held beliefs to find your own beliefs independent of others. This becomes very clear in the idea that you "gave yourself your own commandments." More than just going against the norm, however, the speaker also wants you to recognize and explain "why you turned your back," "how you were able to come to this point," and "how you came to unlearn the lessons" of your past.

Finally, there is the author's specific use of the pronoun 'you.' Perhaps the speaker is addressing a specific person, but it's more likely that he or she is focusing on a more general audience. The fact that we are drawn to this poem means that we probably relate to some part of the poem, and as such the speaker is asking us to increase our self-awareness and determine what we personally believe, rather than blindly accepting what we are told. As expressed in the title of the poem- you, if no one else, can understand why you believe what you do and what led you to those beliefs.

Anne