Bombs and Stars by Leila Farjami
I stood under bombs and stars. Never looked up. Never.
Bombs and Stars
When I was a child, my fire burned black after dark. What is not seen can never be put out. I never asked, What about me? I would ponder the smallness of sparrows, too many of which I found dead or dying in the pond —floating on its algae-mirror like rufous pads of lily— their gray bibs hanging open, darkening in water, their bellies bloated, eyes narrowed and still. Once, in the backyard, I dug a hole under the willow buried two of them deep inside wet earth, packed and shrouded their corpses in white silk, kissed their clenched wings with reverence, muttered a prayer, as if sanctifying saints for their next incarnation. Then, the Tehran winter hit— the bone-sawing snow, the razing windchill, the war, the sparrows in my handmade grave, their feathers turning to shards of ice, their insides slush. Glassy parasites. I never asked, What about them? For six years, death was everywhere. I stood under bombs and stars. Never looked up. Never. Where would they land? On your face or mine? I never asked, What about us?
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Originally published in Cincinnati Review on May 9, 2025. Winner of the 2024 Robert and Adele Schiff Award in Poetry.
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"bone sawing snow." My goodness. Seeing the sparrows (regarded widely as the least of us and therefore more us than anything else), not looking up at bombs. I'd like to go on writing, about Farjami's poem, but it seems to me that there is poetry that inevitably--pehaps tragically- lies beyond commentary, that leaves all chit-chat sounding thin, tinny and almost disrespectful. I can't muster the talk this poem deserves. GMD