Understanding “The Mask on the Masquerade” by Miidong Daloeng

1. Poem is steady, neither slow nor fast.

2. ‘I know what I know.’ It’s easier to label a person however we want to, but what he knows, he knows. No one, nothing can take that from him.

3. Reminds of a friend whose real personality is completely different from the public notion. He’s softer than people liked to describe him.

4. Idiom and simile were used expressly to communicate the Poet’s message.

5. If I would rewrite any line, it would be “Like asteroids falling from the sky” as “Like raindrops falling from the sky” because asteroids aren’t common things that’d hit us.

6. The main theme of this poem is “Look within for the man”

Victor Oyedele