'HAWAD, DER EINZIGE DICHTENDE TUAREG' Poem by Danie Marais

Paris, hier bin ich
meinem Kopf vorauseilend,
Meinem Kopf eines ewigen Tuareg-Piraten
Sinnbild des Schmerzes,
ich komme, hier bin ich
den Tabak der Ironie kauend.
Hawad, Horizontenentführung
Dear Hawad

When you appeared on the stage
here in Bremen
in front of a focused audience of designer glasses
I didn't know what to expect.

In International Poetry on the Road's festival programme
you'd been advertised as
"the only Tuareg writing poetry."
There are few things that make me snort with contempt
more than this kind of condescending political correctness.
They could just as well have described you
as an ‘elephant man' or ‘ fire eater'.

But when you, Hawad,
in your whirlwind James Brown afro and denim jacket
began to growl and clack in Tuareg
I was happy that they'd invited you.

In a stuffy North German lecture hall you let me hear
how a person should speak to ancestral spirits and to NATO
in the mother language of the desert;
how you can stroke the wild west wind
with a dying language.

Hawad,
if you went crazy on some street corner
they'd lock you up.

If you cried and prayed like that
on an anonymous death bed in Paris
people would think you were speaking in tongues
and double the dose.

Dear Hawad
I wish you could know
how I understand -
understand talking
with a cold November night in a language
that my wife did not understand;
how I know about rowing with the tongue
after a ship wreck
in a sinking idiom.

Hawad, I see you know how it feels
to sling dead words into silence
as the deep desert night
bends over your tent
to put out the camp fire.