Hanen Marouani – Poems (Prepared Angela Kosta)
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POEMS OF HANEN MAROUANI
BIOGRAPHY
Hanen Marouani is a Tunisian-Italian poet and researcher with a PhD in French language and literature, focused on Reported Speech in the Narratives of Albert Camus: An Enunciative Approach. She is the author of several poetry collections, essays, and articles, and her work centers on Francophone poetry, intercultural dialogue, and the visibility of marginalized voices.
She contributes to "Le Pan Poétique des Muses" as a journalist and literary columnist, and collaborates with the "Union of Arab Journalists and Writers" in Europe. Active in literary translation through "ATLAS", she also leads workshops and community initiatives exploring creativity, humanity, and women’s voices across cultures.
A two-time laureate of the "Eugen Ionescu doctoral and postdoctoral research program" (2018, 2022) in Romania, she continues to combine scholarship and creation with strong intercultural engagement.
Her collection "Tout ira bien… " won the 2023 International Poetry Prize of the Poéféministe Orientales Review, and she received the Francophonie Europoésie UNICEF Prize in Paris in 2022 for her literary work. Since 2023, she has served on the jury of the Dina Sahyouni Literary Prize, after chairing in 2022 the international poetry contest Poetry and Pandemic, organized by the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie.
1. OUR CHILDLIKE SOULS
Our childlike souls are hesitant,
restless, burning, loud...
They stumble over emotions
like running barefoot in the wet grass,
not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.
I don’t always have the words
to write what I feel.
Often, I just stay still,
searching in silence for what the heart longs to shout.
But you—
your words, even clumsy,
come to awaken mine.
You bring back impulses I thought extinguished,
tender angers,
new shivers,
phrases I would never have dared to lay on the page.
Love is kind.
Love is frightening.
Love both enlightens and blinds.
It touches even those
who claim not to want it.
It seeps through the cracks,
and sometimes, waiting blossoms into a silent miracle.
It also hides in those blurred friendships,
where glances say more than lips,
where gestures brush against something greater
without ever naming it.
I don’t always understand the situation.
But I dare.
I dare anyway.
I dare to hope despite the unknown.
I dare to look for you in the crowd,
to lose myself in your silence,
to follow you in the gentle shadow of your absences.
I dare to move toward you
even when everything tells me to step back.
I dare to drink from your laughter,
to share crumbs of light between two silences,
to watch you smile without saying a word,
and to spend nights guessing if you dream of me.
I don’t know where all this leads,
but I go—
with a beating heart, in a low voice,
with my doubts,
my impulses,
and this wild need to tell you:
I am here,
I am everywhere,
in this mad world,
in this blurred horizon.
Hanen MAROUANI
Strasbourg 07.08.2025
2. THE SMILE AND THE SILENCE
A smile
does not mean
one is happy.
There are tears
in the heart
that never reach the eyes.
We come from a life
woven of contradictions,
and we leave it
without ever solving them.
We move forward
between shadow and blur,
head held high,
heart held low.
I leave hanging
the endless questions:
life,
death,
and the reasons to stay.
Sometimes,
a smile is a barrier,
a barrier against falling apart.
There are cries
we hide in our eyes,
screams muffled
inside silences.
And the one who smiles the most…
is often the one
nobody
understands.
A sad soul
A realist mind
Hanen MAROUANI
Strasbourg 07.08.2025
3. MY ALTER EGO
I searched for you...
In the buried chimera.
The morning came without dew,
threatening the sleepers...
Lost within your shadow.
I dreamed of meeting you one day,
in a small corner of our memories...
Perhaps to hold me close,
to feel you everywhere!
It is not a dream but true—
in vain pursuits,
in futile quests,
I even lose my mind...
Who will throw me a lifeline?
And if you were nothing but a lure...
a simple fool’s trap!
A game of dupes for my heart.
Where are you, you—my alter ego?!
Hanen MAROUANI
Unpublished poem
Sfax, June 2024
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Prepared for publication by Angela Kosta
