Door in Mali, photo Leigh Voigt

ISMAËL DIADIÉ HAÏDARA AND HIS EPIGRAMMATIC POETRY

ISMAËL DIADIÉ HAÏDARA’s poems may speak of exile, but not in a predictable way that just invokes loss and sadness. He writes: “Exile is not sad. / Far from my home here is love, snow, the sea.”

Tebrae is an aggregation of thoughts, episodes and feelings presented in two-line couplet-form nuggets — they are epigrammatic, wistful and wise — even unsentimental: “One day the grass will grow on my grave, but don’t cry, / Floating cloud, I have laughed at everything.”

But ultimately and unsurprisingly, he is a romantic at heart: Story of my life: / war, famine, epidemic and now crazy with love. It is positivity that finally underpins this poem-sequence — and we as readers, are grateful for that.

— Sudeep Sen, author of Anthropocene (Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize Winner), Poetry and International Editor at Ars Notoria

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There is a sap extracted from small fruit that the scribes of all continents call aphorisms, prose poems and / or epigrammes, a form of exposition that permits the transformations of life to be felt: its daily enthusiasms, feelings of belonging and uprooting, love and the absence of love, empathy and the lack of it, being and seeming.

And here comes Ismaël Diadié Haïdara from Timbuktu who lives settled in his heart, (though his path has taken him into Spanish and European exile) and he recreates brief chants from the womb, ancient expressions arising, inspired by voices of the women who live in the vastness of the Sahara. He says: ”I have my plate of rice, my old cape and my walking staff/ What more can I ask of life?”

This type of poetic expression lays down statutes for some open spirit to transmit, and it sets up a resonance between speakers and listeners. Thoughts are made potent in few words. They are condensed by the poetic intuitions of the scribe, or troubadour, who feels deeply and avoids logorrhoea. This light rain of print is composed out of anguish and desire, out of questioning and flights of pain, out of calm and shadows captured, as if by someone overlooking a high precipice – with his courage intact, his blood lit up in the face of beauty.

For this reason we must thank Ismaël, because he alerts us to dangers that come from all four cardinal points, and he alerts us to the tendency of humans to grow unaware and develop spiritual calluses which dry the heart and close the arteries of a poet. That is the moment when the one who is from Timbuktu notes down thoughts arising from a tradition that shows existence in synthesis. He confesses: ”Exile is not sad / Far from my house there is love for snow on the sea.”

Dear readers, open your hearts to this new voice.

— Alfredo Perez Alencart, Universidad de Salamanca, winner of the international poetry award, the Vicente Gerbasi Medal (2009), the Jorge Guillen poetry Award (2012), the Humberto Peregrino (2015) and the Mihail Eminescu Medal (2017).

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The Tebræ are poems of two verses, a genre used by the women who live in the Sahara Desert in Africa. Ismaël D. Haïdara is the first to publish using tebræ.

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Los Tebræ son poemas de dos versos compuestos por mujeres en el desierto del Sahara en África. Ismaël D. Haïdara es el primero que publica tebræ.

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Tebræ

(Libros del Aire, Serie Mayor, Boo de Pielagos, Cantabria, 2021)

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1

Mis tebrae son ocurrencias de un ocioso

Como hojas secas los poemas se amontonan a mis pies.

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My tebrae are loafer´s ideas.

Like dry leaves, poems pile up at my feet.

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5

El exilio no es triste

Lejos de mi casa aquí está el amor la nieve el mar.

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Exile is not sad.

Far from my home here is love, snow, the sea.

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18

Los más tristes muertos son los que saben que están muertos.

Luna negra dime que estoy vivo.

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The saddest people are those who know they are dead.

Black moon, tell me that I’m alive.

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19

Medianoche y ni una sola estrella

Naufrago en el silencio de los vencidos.

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Midnight, and without a single star.

I am shipwrecked in the silence of the vanquished.

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21

Tenía una biblioteca un jardín una tortuga

Ha llegado la guerra y deambulo entre la memoria y los caminos.

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I had a library, a garden, a turtle.

The war has arrived, and I wander between memory and the roads.

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22

Los hombres luchan por la patria y por el cielo

Las nubes y yo nos dejamos llevar por los vientos.

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Men fight for the homeland and for heaven.

The clouds and I let ourselves be carried away by the winds.

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24

En el estanque veo mi cara

No sabe quien soy.

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In the pond I see my face.

He does not know who I am.

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76

Oro, corona, ciencia, nada vale

ríete nada vale la pena.

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Gold, crown, science, nothing is worth it.

Laugh, nothing is worth it.

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151

Donde están los grandes reinos de Gana de Mali del Songhay?

Quien ha visto el tulipán marchitarse no muere para nada.

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Where are the great kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, Songhay?

Whoever has seen the tulip wither does not die at all.

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180

Las nubes y yo

flotamos flotamos.

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The clouds and me

We float and float.

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393

Cada vez que veo la espiga de trigo

Madre, pienso en ti.

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Every time I see the ear of wheat,

mother, I think of you.

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464

Yo solo era nadie hasta que la noche me abrazó

entonces entendí que soy una estrella en la más profunda de las soledades.

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I was just nobody until the night embraced me.

Then I understood that I am a star in the deepest of loneliness.

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535

Esta mañana quiero ponerte anillos de oro en los dedos

Anillos de tallos de trigo y perlas Songhay.

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This morning I want to put gold rings on your fingers

rings of wheat stalks and Songhay pearls.

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716

Sin hogar

la mariposa y yo.

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Homeless

the butterfly and me.

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788

Historia de mi vida:

Guerra, hambre, epidemia y ahora loco de amor.

*

Story of my life:

war, famine, epidemic and now crazy with love.

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896

Tengo mi plato de arroz, mi capa vieja y mi bastón

¿Qué más le voy a pedir a la vida?

*

I have my plate of rice, my old cloak, and my cane.

What else am I going to ask of life?

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1203

Un día la hierba crecerá sobre mi tumba pero no lloréis

Nube flotante me he reído de todo.

*

One day the grass will grow on my grave, but don’t cry,

Floating cloud, I have laughed at everything.

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Exiled in Spain since 2012, ISMAËL DIADIÉ HAÏDARA (Timbuktu, 1957) is a librarian, poet, philosopher, historian, president of the Mahmud Kati Foundation in Spain, and director of the Kati Fund Library in Timbuktu, Mali. Gold medalist of the city of Toledo – Spain and member of Sites of Conscience in New York, he studied drama at the National Institute of Arts (INA) in Bamako and philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure (ENSUP) in Bamako, Mali. He is the author of several works and articles, including: Le statut du monde. Nécessité, possibilité et contingence chez Ibn Arabi, Cordoba, 1992 ; Yawdar Pasha y la conquista saudí del Songhay (1591-1599) Instituto de Estudios almerienses, 1993 et Rabat 1996 ; L’Espagne musulmane et l’Afrique subsaharienne, Editions Donniya, Bamako, 1997 ; Les Juifs à Tombouctou, Editions Donniya, Bamako, 1999 ; Los otros Españoles, mr ediciones, Madrid, 2004 ; Los últimos Visigodos, rd editores, Sevilla, 2003 ; Las lamentaciones del viejo Tombo, Maremoto, Málaga, 2006 ; Abana, Rihla, Córdoba, Almuzara, 2006 ; Monólogo del un carnero, Árbol de Poe, Málaga, 2012 ; Zimma, Vaso Roto Mexico, 2014 – Madrid 2015 ; Tombouctou, Andaluces en la ciudad pérdida del Sahara, Almazara, 2015. Une cabane au bord de l’eau, Genal, Málaga, 2016; Tebrae pour ma mère, Málaga, 2017 ; Sahel, Málaga 2017 ; Journal d’un bibliothécaire à Tombouctou, Almuzara, 2017. De Tolède à Tombouctou, Malaga, 2019. De la Sobriedad, Almuzara, 2020 ; Tebrae, Libros del Aire, Serie Mayor, Boo de Pielagos, Cantabria, 2021.