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And yet, how much would I like to understand the urge that drove Aroon to write the poems presented here, poems which, in retrospect, appear like the landmarks of his life, if not its very essence. Suddenly, unexpectedly, in front of a new landscape, or in a sudden outburst of joy, despair, love or loneliness, he would take his pen and write feverishly. In a letter posted in Kano, Nigeria, and written to his friend Mansoor, originally from Bangladesh, who had settled in Venezuela, Aroon clearly explained how the need to write overcame him "like an earthquake ". "In your card of 1977, you asked me what happened to my poetry. I actually wrote one poem immediately, then somehow or other, my memories were obliterated, by sand I suppose, and I never managed to send it to you then.. Now, thank the holy and unholy stars, after your this year's card, suddenly I felt an earthquake in me and I woke up as if after a long "summer hibernation", looked for the piece I wrote, and found it on one of the well-travelled trunks which have now become a part of the family, and I felt pulses returning, blood flowing, everything rejuvenating with a new order of life; I could shake off all the Saharan dust, all the "Harmattan" dust ." Aroon did not write poetry but was seized by it as one is suddenly seized by life itself.

Sometimes, Aroon's zest for living and discovering unusual places, just made him gather exotic names as one would pick colourful flowers. In the same letter, mentioned above, he writes again: "I am speculating on the idea of returning to Venezuela one day, not just for holydaying but to work and live there for a longer period. I realise now that we quite enjoyed our stay there. I remember Puerto Ordaz, San Felix, El Dorado, Tucupita, El Tigre, Carupano, Cumana. I also remember "Lerida Matey"! How can I forget the vision on which I wrote a poem?"

Mastering so many languages, Aroon loved words, wondered at them, turned them around and twisted them. In many of his poems, he uses French, Russian (Gospodin Neighbour and Glasnost), German (Elisa) or even Malagsy (Mon Vintana Malagasy). Every language being rich with its own culture and vision of reality, it was Aroon's privilege to be familiar with so many. He found in words the precious gems which shed a new light on a passing emotion and even bring reality into the realm of dream. The face of the loved one bears "an oleander smile" and a "perfumed eye". Not unlike the surrealist poets, Aroon had the talent of bringing together opposite images which suddendly tear apart our trivial vision of the world and bring us nearer to something totally new, and unexpected. Writing poems are at times imaginary travels to unknown lands. Only a poet could intimately link together Russia and Madagascar! (Gospodin Neighbour and Glasnost) or render both the aridity of the soil and of the soul in "Sahel".

Recollections of happy moments seemed to find in poetry their natural expression ("Our love"). Aroon also knew how to grasp these fleeting moments of fear, melancholy, doubt and despair.

Sometimes, quite often, a poem was nothing more than an outcry of sheer "joie de vivre" in which Aroon put all his sense of humour and irony: at the moment of leaving his job and going on a holiday ("Today 9 March 73) or when he laughs at the modern "Academic Mercenaries". In a joyous irreverence (Aristocratic Arithmetic) he pokes fun at a Nigerian University administrator who refused to admit that we could not move into our two room flat in the campus because it had … a big hole in the roof !

Aroon never claimed to be a professional writer of poems. He wrote often for the simple pleasure of it. That is why many of his poems were written on special occasions and destined for people he loved or just had come accross, like little "Elliot", playing in a sand-pit. "A Quinquenniad by the Ole Man River" was addressed to our many good friends in Louisiana at a farewell-party. "Ma Belle-Ma" is a moving poem specially written for his mother-in-law, a frail lady who had become 90 years old, at a time when Aroon was himself already severely ill. Annick Mohua was also given the precious gift of a poem by her father on the occasion of her 30th birthday.

I have not tried to put these poems in chronological order. I thought it best to let those lines flow naturally with their ups and downs. Dates and places of composition are indicated in the index. However I should mention that "Boga Kaurie or Bogie the White Crow…" is the last of Aroon's poems. It is also the longest and strangest. Aroon's ambition in this very poem was to somehow tell his (our) own story. It is good to read the epilogue of this poem and share with him the wishful thought of his being reborn. For those readers who knew Aroon, his poems will remind them of a warm-hearted human being full of life, knowledge and curiosity. Through their reading, Aroon will be already, somehow, reincarnated.