Ode to Ballaké Sissoko
 
                                    Precious like the gold and salt in Timbuktu
                                    Your notes go echoing
                                    Possess
                                    Painstakingly plucked
                                    That meticulous clarity
                                    Of scribes’ transcriptions of old Arabic
                                    On goatskin manuscripts
                                    In sand-strewn libraries
                                    Sand is omnipresent here
                                    Leo the African came as a merchant                             
                                    René Caillié came three hundred years later
                                    The first European to see it and live
                                   
                                    Bamako is green and burgeoning
                                    The quickly falling notes cascade
                                    Down River Niger’s rapids hauntingly
                                   
                                    One thousand one hundred and thirty-one miles away
                                    Is the hot and arid desert of the Hoggar
                                    In Algeria’s south
                                    And Tamanrasset
                                    Where Father Foucauld died
                                   
                                    That death heralded a new beginning
                                    For not to exploit or explore did he come
                                    But to share
                                   
                                    We are people of One Book that is yet to be read