"The Sea Eats the Land at Home" opens in media res, or in the middle of the action, as a natural disaster unfolds and the sea floods a coastal town. First and foremost, these lines explicitly convey the sea's power, and the power of nature overall, as the water overruns the town's "cooking places" and drags the people's firewood out on the tide. It is clear the town and its people are defenseless to stop the sea from:
Running in and out of the cooking places,
Collecting the firewood from the hearths
And sending it back at night;
Most notably, however, these opening lines immediately introduce the sea via personification. The speaker describes its actions in human-like terms, "running," "collecting," and "sending" things the way a person might.
Not only does this establish the sea as the poem's central character, but it also suggests that the sea's actions should be understood as somehow purposeful, beyond the indifferent power of nature. This renders the sea and the flood all the more sinister. It also establishes the major extended metaphors of the poem, in which the sea represents more than just nature—serving as a symbol for colonial or migratory forces as well.
Equally fundamental to the success of these opening lines are the poem's use of alliteration, assonance, consonance, and asyndeton. The first three devices all relate to sound; their presence here supports the poem's homage to Ewe dirges, traditional songs of lament in the poet's culture. In particular, note the hard /c/ sounds that capture the sea's cruelty; the repeated gerunds ("ing" verbs); and finally the /f/t and /t/ sounds, all of which taken together give these lines a sense of cohesion and unity. The assonant /o/ and /oo/ sounds, meanwhile, help establish the poem's musicality:
At home the sea is in the town,
Running in and out of the cooking places,
Collecting the firewood from the hearths
And sending it back at night;
The asyndeton, on the other hand, in which lines 1-3 form a continuous sentence without coordinating conjunctions, subtly creates a rushed sensation for readers, helping convey the overwhelming nature of the disaster taking place before the speaker's eyes.