‘The Grieved Lands of Africa’ is a poem of 42 lines with seven uneven stanzas. It is a free verse. ‘The Grieved Lands of Africa’ presents the uniqueness of Black race and their resistance to slavery and colonial rule. It belongs to the group of poems which advance the unique beauty of the Black race and the dominant strength of being Black. The poet draws from the realistic nature of Negritude (a movement which celebrates and promotes the uniqueness and dominance of Black race to other races popularly propagated by Leopald Sedar Senghor).

In the poem, ‘The Grieved Lands of Africa’, the poet presents African race as an imperishable race and African land as a land that can withstand anything (Lines 40–41).

In the third stanza, the poet bemoans the destruction of African dreams. All those blacks sold into slavery had their dreams in life but were stifled out by slavery while the Africans under the colonialist administration were exiled to prevent them from attaining their dreams in their father’s land hence the land grieves for her children. The poet was sent to Cape Verde for exile amidst his struggle for the Liberation of Angola. This was the fate of most other African and Black nationalists fighting for the liberation and independence of their countries from other parts of the continent. Line 13 ‘In the dream soon undone in jinglings of ‘jailers’ keys’.

In the sixth stanza, the poet maintains that the innocent blood of Blacks shade during slavery and the quest for independence of African are sacrificial to the survival of the Black nations. Hence new stars are rising from strong desire of men to repossess the land and appease the grieve land. The poet concludes by stating that Africa is an indefatigable part of the earth which cannot be annihilated and Angola is great part of it. Lines 40 – 41 ‘Because we are living/And are imperishable particles’. Instead, new stars will emerge which help in the transformation of the world as we have seen in the world today.