Why should this surprise me? People keep asking me about U.S. poetry—to describe it or say something about its state, which I’m reminded here is also a political word, though they mean its condition, as if it were about to be admitted to the poetry intensive care unit, or discharged with a tag on its toe. In the U.S. we’ve been announcing the death of poetry for decades.

It’s hard to believe in the death of poetry here. All these poets from everywhere are quick and curious. About the plants scooting around on little robot wheels, edging flirtatiously next to our shoes. About the town, the theater, the cheese. About each other and what poetry is like where we all come from.

If there is, for good reasons, no such thing as Afghan poetry, there is this poetry of Karman Mir Hazar’s, which comes out of place, tribe, experience, and language. Persian. The moderator, who shares in an intimate literary culture, wonders that Karman and his publisher Sam Vaseghi haven’t met before this week. I find a point of kinship.  I never met the publisher of my first book, who died this year. We corresponded by letter. The roads are good in the U.S. Still, it is 3000 miles long and 2000 miles wide and holds 300 million people.

After the session, I talk with the Dutch painter sitting across the table. I am curious, so she shows me notebooks full of whimsical, abstract drawings. At dinner, American poet Christian Hawkey—whom I had to travel to Rotterdam to meet—tells me he was a student of a dear friend, Agha Shahid Ali, who died in 2001. Of the four American poets I will sit down with on Thursday, I’ve met one before this week. But we share friends. Curiosity.  The work. A small culture in a big country.

Here we are all at once strangers and familiars. We find poetry in many languages, inspired by work from other languages, even those of painting or roving plants. And there are people to receive this poetry, all over the world.  Tonight, I’ve returned early to my hotel to see the last event with those others, on my computer on the live stream. I’m curious. In my room, waiting for things to start, I feel (almost) as much in company as I did earlier in the garden. I hear a voice talking Dutch, a harp being tuned. I see fingers on strings, graceful and disembodied in the dark, poised to speak.

Kabul 2007; I remember when I was invited accidently to a literary meeting in Afghanistan’s presidential palace. A man working for the president cultural adviser phoned me to say that President Hamid Karzai had invited more than 200 poets and they would be happy for me to attend.

Poets would read their poems and  the President would speak about the cultural situation, said the caller. As a journalist and a poet who usually criticized high-ranking officials I was curious. Karzai and literature? What an interesting combination!

It was summer, but I don’t remember the exact date. I accepted and I went to presidential palace. Before and after a heavily fortified check point, I saw many people who had come from different parts of Afghanistan, like me, calling themselves poets.

Hello, hello, hello, a long greeting, and then Karzai entered. The Afghanistan national TV station, RTA, covered the event live.

OK . . . everything was set up under the trees in the presidential palace grounds and two announcers, one speaking Pashto and another one Persian, launched the literary meeting.

The first poet was announced and the host said that after him, there would be a poet who represents for the new generation of literature. Ah, another surprise. He invited me to read some of my poems. The first man from Nangarhar read something long in Pashto.

I hadn’t come prepared to read poems, so I quickly wrote a few lines while the man from Nangarhar read his work.

I had the attention of all of Afghanistan now over live TV, and so I wanted to make a special statement to Hamid Karzai.

This event reminded me of what I had once read by Sultan (King) Mahmud when 11 centuries ago he invited poets to one of his gatherings. Also this event reminded me of the people around Mahmud who were lazy, who, even when they were hungry, couldn’t be bothered to pick up apples that had fallen from the trees.

Then I read out something like the following:

Brothers, Sisters,
Is this poetry?
Is poetry only rhythm and rhyme?
Brothers,
Is poetry only beauty-spot and lip?
Sisters,
Is this a poem when it doesn’t have the power
To go outside the palace
And become a hand over a child’s head?

Then I said: it was 1983 when Raúl Alfonsín became president of a conflicted Argentina and in that year started national programs for justice.

Now, after several years of this guy’s presidency, he has gathered most of the criminals from the late king/dictator Muhammad Zahir and shares power with them.

This is not the guy Afghanistan needs. I said that, and then I left the palace.

Read more about Kamran Mir Hazar on www.poetry.nl and www.poetryinternational.org.