The South African writer Antjie Krog described meeting a nomadic desert poet in Senegal who described the role of poets in his culture.
The job of the poet, he explained to her, is to remember where the water holes are. The survival of the whole group depends on a few water holes scattered around the desert. When his people forget where the water is, the poet can lead them to it.
This is an apt metaphor for role of a leader in any culture. The water is the history, the memory, the juice, the elixir of shared experience. Let’s keep this notion in mind while examining the role of the leader – and the poet – in our world today.
