The poem ends with the phrase “in a dream” which suggests strongly that it was all a dream about making African voices heard by Europe. Her poem "distant ties" touches upon mixed identities and environments: Ghana and Berlin. It shows the co-evolution of the biological and environmental genes: my mother 's hands are white i know i don 't know them my mother the hands my father 's hands i know are black i hardly know him my father the hands apart ……………. apart ……………. apart ………….. apart ………… distant ties connected distances between continents on the road at home. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 41-42)
Repetition of apart, typed four times apart from the body of the text, stresses the fact that her parents are set apart, from each other and from her, which increases her torture since she is biologically as well as environmentally a
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bitter cold. without words. (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 24) Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival” and Ayim’s “the time thereafter” shed light on two contradictory images: the dream of black people, which has up till now been deferred, and the possibility of its realization: For those of us who live at the shoreline ……………………………. for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children’s mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours …………………………………… we were never meant to survive. (The Complete Poems 255-56)
Ayim’s poem depicts an image of a dreamed deferred/stolen, which is reminiscent of Langston Hughes’ “Harlem”, leaving the world as a waste