TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

One of the best arguments for what poetry can do, what it’s for, how it can serve us, is that poetry says the unsayable.

Poet Marie Howe defines poetry as “a cup of language to hold what can’t be said.” Poems are so often read at funerals or after tragedies because these are occasions when we are lost for words, when we are struggling to make sense of what feels senseless. The language of poetry is like a key in a door, and the door opens into a hidden room where more is possible, where more is felt than in our ordinary speech.

Poetry exists in a place beyond the limits of our everyday, utilitarian language, which is meant to be clear and straightforward. If I need to make an appointment, or ask for help, or delegate a task, I’ll be best served by communicating plainly and directly, and with brevity. If I want a sandwich, I order a sandwich — no metaphors involved!

But poems are their own kind of communication. Regardless of its style, a poem can’t be paraphrased. The poem’s meaning is the poem. It speaks to us, and moves us, in ways we might struggle to articulate.

Poems that engage with war and grief are texts that communicate to us in ways that news articles about war, and loss, and grief cannot. An article might tell us what happened, who died, how many casualties there were. It should provide facts as to who, what, where, when, and how. It might even attempt the why. But a poem sings to us. A poem sits with us. Holds us, even.

In today’s poem, the speaker grapples with what, in the face of so much violence and destruction, a poem can do.

Panegyric
by Leila Farjami

If I didn’t write of war,
      I couldn’t speak of lilies
                                    in your hair—
the bullet wound,
      the final bed, 
                                    the funeral.

The blaze that extolled you 
      to ash, 
                    the rumble,
                    the rubble,
                    the shape of your hand
                                                           before hands existed.
I couldn’t recall 
      the day we fled,
                    bodies dripping to the sea.

I couldn’t name the light
      snared in the trawl,
the whale
                    dragged ashore,
                                         those who stepped
                                                  from its mouth—
                                                                                you, me.
                                                                                                   Others, still.
And then—this earth.
      I couldn’t bear its inferno,
its soot, its deer in the clearing,
                                         antlers blackened.

And who could tame fires
                                         but the dead below?

Where a child, bone-thin,
                    is laid beneath cypress roots, 
there should be no tomorrow.
                                                           But there is.

No breakfast, 
                    no daylight,
no touch. 
No 7 p.m. at the table,
                    no cake in the kitchen. 
                                                           But there is. 

No neck on the altar,
                    no blade whetted.
No breadline slaughter,
                                         no baby blanket
                    blown to shreds.
                                                           But there is.

No butcher should grin
                                         at the lens, 
                    but he does.
                                                           He does.

There should be a lily
      left in your hair—
                                         one I could wreathe
                    into a poem,
                                         one to tuck back
                    into your braid.
                                                           Only one.
                                                                  And there is.

“Panegyric” by Leila Farjami from DAUGHTER OF SALT © 2026 Leila Farjami. Used by permission of Trio House Press.