In our little village
When elders are around,
Boys must not look at girls
And girls must not look at boys
Because the elders say
That is not good.
Even wn night comes
Boys must play separately,
Girls must play separately.
But humanity is weak
So boys and girls meet.
The boys play hide and seek
And the girls play hide and seek.
The boys know where the girls hide
And the girls know where the boys hide_
So in their hide and seek,
Boys seek girls,
And each to each sing
Songs of love.
©Markwei Martie
The author of the poem, Life In Our Village, is a Ghanaian poet and writer, he later took to religious path and career.
Looking at the poem which has 3 stanzas of unequal lines, the first stanza talks about the reason why boys and girls must not play together, the second stanza stated the reason why boys and girls didn't heed the advice and played together, the final stanza was about the outcome of the boys and girls play together.
The spoke of reality in an entertaining way. It held a classic rural setting (like in the days when moon
light play was rampant) and the diction was very simple and easily understood by all.
The theme of the poem are:
(1) The theme of irresistibility
(2) The theme of delinquency
(3) The theme of disillusionment
The irresistibility part of the poem was that "humanity is weak"(line 10), the boys and the girls could not help it but play together in spite of elders warnings and reasons.
The delinquency part of the poem showed that youths will always be youths and there are prone to misconduct due to their stubbornness and lack of broad experience of life.
The disillusionment part of the poem was that play was given a different picture different from what the youth knew it to be but they broke such illusion of play by playing together.
In the poem, one would see repetition, parallelism, euphemism, etc.
READ MORE POETIC ANALYSISSamuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings soaring high)