Listen … it is evening in Kumasi,

And the lengthening sunlight fingers stroke the town

In a final caress, and move away westward,

Drawing a blind across the sky

Behind them as they move.

Can you hear the dark blind moving?

Listen!

Listen to the groaning noises,

Wild, nightmarish, fiendish wails …

Voices of dreaming town

Dreaming now at nine o'clock.

At Kejetsia … the city's centre,

Bright new lights are on:

But here, where I stand,

In this deserted corner,

The lights are fading in our hearts,

And lovers have to part at sundown

If they want to meet tomorrow;

So let me go to Kejetsia

To get a taxi home.

Cars will cross at Kejetsia

If they dare not come near here.

They won't, or dare not come near here,

Because, from where you are,

You can hear

The offensive-defensive singing of a gang

And the clang and yell of slogans,

To keep their spirits up,

Or frighten attackers off.

Listen!

Did you hear it too?

The wailing of the pregnant woman

Caught under a crumbling wall blown up?

The children, terrified, and running away to safety

And the heavy clatter of the boots

Of a pair of racing police men?

Did you count the explosions too?

Five, I think, in a rumbling sequence,

The last, the loudest of them all …

And five more homes will bleed!

I must run to Kejetsia,

To the mocking brightness at the centre

Of the pregnant town in labour,

To get a taxi home.

Kejetsia was bare and quiet

Except for a lone figure … waiting …

Looking for a taxi home.

He moved away as I approached,

And would not speak to me.

His outstretched hand was thin and black,

And fluttered in the wind.

A passing taxi picked him up,

And picked me up too.

Then a curious pleasure flushed his face

To see me by his side.