Song of a Reformed Headhunter

I was introduced to the poetry of Suzan Alaiwan (also spelled Suzanne Alaywan) by the editors Kate Rogers and Viki Holmes in their world poetry anthology Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women  (Haven Books, Hong Kong). "Suzan Alaiwan was born in Beirut in 1974 to a Lebanese father and an Iraqi mother. Because of the war, she spent her adolescence in Andalus, Paris, and Cairo. She graduated in 1997 from the faculty of Journalism and Media in the American University of Cairo. Now she is living in Beirut." She writes in Arabic. Her poems in the anthology are characterized by an appealing gnomic wisdom. In "Poems," she wrote, as translated by Sayed Gouda, "When we stumble over a stone, / it guides us." The line played in my mind for quite a while. I wanted to respond to it both playfully and seriously, so I took the words "stumble," "stone" and "guides" and spun variations on them, and wrote my "Fall: Five Poems." ...

Five Poems "When we stumble over a stone It guides us." --Suzan Alaiwan, "Poems" He listens for the stumble in a poem, so he can find the stone. On a white stone is scribbled this stark poem: "Our guide stumbled." When you stumble over poems, don't pocket the stones, or else you can't move. I do not say, O my body, you are a stone, but I do say I am home. Take this stone: may it be to you a guide and a poem.