Huddled pavements, dark,
the lonely wail of a police-siren
moving stealthily across
grey alleys of anonymity
asking for food either
as plasma in hospital jars,
escaping fires in tenements
grown cold and bitter,
or seeking food in community garbage cans
to escape its eternal nightmare.
Harlem, the dark dirge of America
heard at evening
mean alleyways of poverty,
dispossession, early death
Awoonor here compares the poverty and suffering of Harlem to a “dirge” or funeral song. For the poet, Harlem represents the death of the nation, or more specifically the false promise of equality in American ideology. 
 Though African, Awoonor’s poem here shares much with African-American poetry, especially of the first half of the century. In fact,  Langston Hughes ’s poem “Harlem” similarly laments the death (or “deferral”) of the dream of American equality. 
 
  Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? 
 Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. 
 Or does it explode? 

Harlem on a Winter Night