In this chapter, I amplify Nathaniel MackeyMackey, Nathaniel.’s other-conscious prose writings from Chapter 2 by examining how he enacts his ethicsethics. in his poetry. I trace specific African sources uncovered by academics in the 1960s and after, such as DogonAfricaDogon peoples creation myths, the South African notion of Ubuntuubuntu., West African “spirit writing,” and contemporary African thought. Mackey explicitly employs these resources for ethical ends both thematically and formally in his long, ongoing, double-stranded series of poems SongMackey, Nathaniel. of the Andoumboulou and muMackey, Nathaniel.., both of which he began writing in the late 1970s and which have become the total focus of his poetic work to the current moment. Because of Mackey’s use and knowledge of European continental ethical philosophy, namely poststructural anti-humanism with its African roots, I situate his work in the philosophy of Emmanuel LevinasLevinas, Emmanuel. whose ethics has already been compared to African ethics by African philosophers. Although irreducible to Levinasian ethics, this contextualization helps make legible Mackey’s ethical use of these African sources, which are hardly ever considered in Western literary studies or philosophy, for that matter. Mackey explores in his writing the centrality of African ethical thinking to the rise of a diverse modernism (which is sometimes called postmodernism or multiculturalism). Far from being a space created by white magnanimity, appropriation, or guilt, this ethics according to Mackey arrives from AfricaAfrica into modernity via several channels: musicmusic., myth, religion, and a poetics that recognizes the drift and creak of language’s ability to regulate human interaction. This chapter specifically explores his life-long tracing of the roots of an African ethics that animates modern ethical ideas of othernessotherness.see also alterity., indeterminacy, and responsibilityresponsibility.see also obligation..