Ellis Ayitey Komey (b. 1927) is a Ghanaian poet, short-story writer and editor.

The change

Ellis Ayitey Komey

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Your infancy now a wall of memory

In harmattan the locusts filled the sky

Destroying the sweat put into the field

And restless seas shattered canoes

The fisher-folk put to sail by noon.

The impatience in your teens

Yet silent were your dreams

With the fires in your heart

Breaking the mask of innocence.

The evasive solitude in your womb

And the determination of your limbs

With eyes like the soaring eagle

Shattering the glass of ignorance.

Your infancy now a wall of memory

Before this you, like the worms,

Leaning on for vain indecorous dreams

And the cobras with venomous tongues

Licking the tepid blooms of hibiscus.

*Third World Resurgence No. 328, December 2017, p 48