Letter to Dennis Lu

Abstract

The poem reflects on the speaker’s deep connection with his African homeland and community. He contrasts indigenous ways of understanding grief, happiness, affection, loneliness, and spirituality with Western psychological and philosophical theories. Nature is presented as alive and communicative, while mourning and suffering are understood collectively rather than individually. The poem ultimately celebrates an indigenous worldview in which spirituality is active and lived—“God was a verb”—rather than reduced to an abstract concept.