Brief Biography
M. Driss Boukili El Hassani is a Moroccan poet, writer, and educational journalist. He was born in Marrakech in 1955 and grew up in Ouarzazate, a city that became the primary source of inspiration for his creative memory. He worked as a secondary school teacher in Casablanca. He writes poetry, literary essays, cultural criticism, and autobiographical works. His writing is distinguished by its humanistic spirit, romantic sensibility, and Sufi inspiration, with a particular focus on Moroccan memory, human concerns, environmental issues, and intercultural dialogue. He has published numerous articles and studies in the Moroccan press, participated in Arab and international literary and trade union forums, and contributed to cross-cultural literary projects aimed at fostering understanding and friendship among peoples through literature. Among his most notable publications are the poetry collections The Moon Writes My Longing (Wajd Yaktubuhu Al-Qamar) and Shadows of Dream and Reality, both published in 2025. He also contributed to the collective anthology When Words Blossom. His poetry celebrates love, emotion, and the beauty of the human spirit. He is also the author of Ouarzazate That Lives Within Me, a work that combines autobiography and memoir. Through an honest and vivid personal narrative, the book documents the social and cultural transformations of Ouarzazate while portraying his childhood and the lives of ordinary and marginalized people during the 1960s and 1970s.
عزيزتي الشاعرة أنيسيا،
تلقيت رسالتك الكريمة بامتنان عميق، وأشكرك من القلب على كلماتك الراقية، وعلى ثقتك الكريمة بإحالة أعمالي إلى رئيس التحرير السيد فلاديمير ألكساندروفيتش بابوشين.
أقدّر جهودكم الكبيرة في إعداد هذا الألمنـاك الأدبي، وسأكون سعيدًا بانتظار صدوره، متمنيًا له كل النجاح والانتشار.
تقبلي خالص تقديري واحترامي، وتحياتي المفعمة بالمودة لك ولصغارك، مع أطيب الأمنيات لكم جميعًا بالصحة والسعادة والإبداع الدائم.
أخوكم
ذ إدريس البوكيلي الحسني
Driss replied to themself
welcomed us.
Inside, we climbed upward through steep passages, our tiny bodies following one another like silent shadows ascending into another age. Only a frail thread of light, falling from somewhere above, prevented us from surrendering completely to the darkness.
Then the cave revealed itself.
Corridors.
Hidden chambers.
Perfectly proportioned rooms carved with astonishing precision.
Everything appeared equal, ordered, almost timeless—as though shaped by a civilization that measured humanity not by wealth or power, but by existence itself.
Within Tazakht, we were reborn.
Passing through its narrow entrance felt less like entering a cave than returning to the womb of the earth and emerging anew. The mountain tested our bodies, our courage, and our endurance before granting us passage back into daylight.
Without realizing it, our Ramadan journeys had become sacred rituals.
Every visit stripped away another layer of fear.
Every return taught us that mystery was not something to flee, but something to embrace.
Tazakht became our first lesson in wonder.
Our first dialogue with silence.
Our first encounter with eternity.
To me, it remains a forgotten Platonic cave—a sanctuary where prehistoric humanity may once have sought refuge, and where memory itself still sleeps beneath layers of stone. Its echo speaks without language. Its walls preserve stories no chronicle has recorded. Its darkness shelters questions that history has yet to answer.
Whenever memory leads me back there, I do not hear voices.
I hear silence.
A silence alive with symbols.
Alive with absence.
Alive with the invisible presence of those who came before us.
Perhaps that was the true gift of Tazakht.
It taught us that before civilization, before possessions, before names and borders, all human beings stood equal—in fear, in curiosity, and in their longing to understand the unknown.
There, our skin touched the living body of the earth. Light embraced shadow. Memory embraced mystery. And childhood, for a fleeting moment, touched eternity.
Who, among today’s historians and archaeologists, will dare descend once more into the depths of this forgotten pyramid?
Tazakht still stands beyond the reach of time—its place unchanged, its age unknown.
And somewhere within its silent heart, beneath stone and darkness, sleeps a history that has never been written… still waiting for the one who will ask the first question.
A BREATH IN A CUP
You are the hidden treasure of my soul,
and my own spirit rests like a fragrant breath within a humble cup.
You seasoned love with the finest salt of tenderness,
until our night became an enchanted universe,
where every star remembered its first light.
You stripped away all that was worthless,
all that could never measure the wealth of the heart,
so I might embrace the radiant star of faith.
Then you clothed me in garments woven from jasmine blossoms,
and set me gently among the flowers of an eternal garden.
Since then, I have wandered through the chambers of my own heart,
giving thanks for the infinite generosity of the Most Merciful,
while dawn performs its sacred ablution
in the fragrance rising from your eyes,
awakening the soul of time itself.
You are as rare as a precious moment
that eternity never grants twice;
pure honey kissed by the sun
of our most luminous days.
You are a poem that no passing death can wither.
How could beauty ever fade
when it has made its home
among pearls and blossoms?
From the depths of your heart,
you offered me a single pearl.
The pearl became a poem.
The poem became a friendship.
The friendship became a prayer—
a quiet act of devotion
that neither time nor distance can diminish.
And so it shall remain:
a gentle warmth for the soul,
through the days of life,
and beyond the silence of death.
THE BLAZE OF ENCOUNTER
O ember glowing through the frost of longing,
Come—let us seal love’s sacred covenant with the madness of desire.
For my passion has become a tender echo that forever calls your name,
And every vein within me strains beneath the hunger to hold you close.
I am but a wandering vessel adrift upon the twin rivers of your being,
Yearning to anchor at the blissful shores of your embrace.
I thirst for a single sip from the nectar of your lips,
A kiss that melts the fever of waiting,
Until I drown, whispering endless sighs between your welcoming arms.
Come, let us compose a chapter lovers have never dared to write—
A tale where ancient desires awaken in all their untamed splendor;
Where the bed becomes a blazing constellation of ecstasy,
And every touch kindles the sacred fire of our embrace.
I long for a meeting worthy of eternity,
Deep as a continent trembling beneath the pulse of earthquakes;
Where we taste martyrdom as though it were honey,
And tear down every wall, every distance, every silent fracture
That has ever stood between our two bodies.
So pour your beautiful madness into my cup until it overflows;
The dew has spread across the night,
And the sleeping thirst for delight has awakened once more.
Let not the envious write a single word against our love.
For this evening belongs to us alone—
An endless kingdom of yearning,
Of rapture,
Of love set ablaze.
THE POET AND DEATH
Upon the ocean of night,
where existence held its breath,
a silence rose—
higher still,
beyond all sound.
A stillness embraced the fragile threads of slumber,
rippling, folding upon itself
over the thresholds of all that had been.
Within the hidden chambers of mystery,
beneath the veils of evening’s darkness,
our defiant poet dwelt—
a dreamer,
mad with longing,
wandering through the boundless kingdoms of imagination.
His poems were pilgrims of love,
forever journeying from soul to soul.
Then, in that appointed hour,
destiny unfolded.
In the blink of an eye,
with the silent footfall
of melting snow becoming water,
Death came to our poet—
unannounced,
stealthily,
on that solemn evening.
She was no fleeting passerby,
but an inexorable decree,
a gentle phantom asleep upon a tranquil sea.
No cry.
No clamor.
No protest.
Only eternity’s silence
overflowing every horizon.
He lay upon a carpet woven of the heavens,
beside the mirror of still waters.
His memory could no longer speak.
He looked back upon his life and whispered,
as Death revealed her face:
„Where have all those souls gone?
Did they dissolve into the wandering clouds?
Do they linger beyond their mortal end?
Or have they fallen like weary stars
into the fathomless abyss?“
And in that sacred instant—
the written hour,
the measured hour,
the hour known only to God—
the inevitable stood before him,
upright as the first letter of creation,
its crown ablaze with celestial fire.
It shook the poet’s spirit,
reached into the deepest chambers of his being,
until time itself became
a heartbeat…
another…
and one more.
Then the giant within him bowed before God.
A thousand prostrations—
and another…
and another.
He pleaded with his Lord,
begging for deliverance,
if only for one more fleeting moment.
Death gazed upon him
while the light withdrew.
With a chill that trembled through eternity,
she spoke:
„I am the key to every ending,
and the gate to every beginning.
I come from the Light of God—
the Light that never fades.
By His command I lift the souls,
untouched by injustice.
You fear me, Poet,
as every child of earth fears me,
for you long for immortality
and refuse the thought of oblivion.
Yet through me
true rest begins.
This world is but vanity upon vanity,
a straw surrendered
to the palm of the wind.
I am the elixir of Truth.
Not here…
but there,
beyond the final horizon.
There I shall extinguish
the last lantern
of your earthly dawn.“
Our poet stretched his gaze toward the heavens.
His soul appeared
like a white feather,
floating with the serenity of a sacred farewell.
Without resistance,
she surrendered herself
to the One who fashioned her.
No hour remained
for poetry,
for love songs,
or for reproach.
The feather drifted through infinity,
melting into the night of departure,
becoming no more than a whisper of wind,
journeying far beyond suffering,
until nothing remained within the house
but silence…
and emptiness.
So let forgiveness embrace that departing soul—
for him,
for us,
and by the Lord of Heaven,
whose mercy knows no end.