The prime minister was watching a disaster movie when we found him. We are the media we cried. Run. The insiders ran around wildly looking for the exits. On the face of the deep the ghosts of civilization wailed. The shadow of a doubt dissolved, everyone just trying to understand how what happened happened. Figuring out how became the choicest profession. Don’t misunderstand us— we always obeyed the unwritten rules, we always respected the number of minutes allotted for the interview—always believed in the existence of the singular reason for the world’s incomprehensible demise. It was not our job to notice the rain no longer fell, we were busy tracking who was logging in and logging out of the current war while new faces of God made their appearances behind our backs as always. We checked on our stringers. We called in to get a reading on the deathwatch. You’re breaking up. Can you give me 50 words The calendar lit up with the dates when each thing of value would no longer exist. We reported it exactly, the idea was to leave no trace in our language of grief, regret, despair. Not a trace of us must remain. But where can our lives be hidden we thought as we hurried from telling to telling, permeated with absence. Then it began to close in all round us, the dry weather of information. Once I looked up at the clouds as if I’d never felt wind before— no it did not rain, but I almost remembered the smell— whose list are our names on— we who have passes with access to all the realities— when will the bullets cross through us— we who mistake narrative for history … If there is peace we are less busy so not to be trusted. Those of us whose wounds are still healing will tell u that story again & again. The smell of a newborn escapes us. The ozone approaching escapes us. We are part of an occupation whose aims escape us. We do not write in order to remember. Language flows through us—no angles, no corners, no bends—never an impasse. As for the past that is not our business. The prime minister is now hanging from his rope. We must report the cries and the laughter, the mood of the crowd. We never ask about the strangeness. But the strangeness is starting to stare at us. It seems to seethe. We hurry to get it down. And now it is eloquence which stares at us furiously. Its gaze reminds us of something— the scent of ozone rises— there is thunder is there not— it’s hard to know. We are on deadline.
The killing spree began one day in the suburbs. It was the first day of its life so at first it cried out. It tried to move swiftly into the past—but we got its essence down before it slipped away into the here-to-stay where it could hide, where it could become perpetual. We didn’t report how the trees were bleeding, how people’s pockets filled up with ash, how strangers’ organs ended up on our doorsteps in baskets, like fish from the market, slippery & gleaming. We were becoming watchmen, awake in our sleep. As the killing developed it needed a sense of direction. We listened for where the cries were coming from, the north wind became a stringer, the south wind brought us the death rattles, bullets whirred like hummingbirds when there were hummingbirds, the gold & green ones, sometimes the ruby-throated … You’d find traces that made for good copy— once broken teeth—many handfuls—in the grassblades in the alley, sometimes severed fingers, sometimes a whole hand, you could become emotional if you weren’t careful, but we were careful, the feeling of living—had we ever had it— it has been so long now & we are exhausted— souls like froth in the shorebreak— movements of men in mud. Once I heard clapping behind a wall, but for whom or what. I know it is my job but the seasons have blurred. What I wouldn’t give for a single voice telling a story to a child, & knowing the story to be true, for the look on the face of that listener hearing it all for the first time— who we were once, how we slowly lost our way—but told as a fable, with lists of the creatures which had lived in forests, in oceans, & with slow description, eloquent & calm, of what oceans were & what rivers were, & forests, & dream … I am listening & hiding & my heart is outstretched as the news of the battle arrives & I must rise to report it, to card out the rumors, how much land gained, how much land lost, my voice must reach you with this report, the story of how it all will have been worth it to create our new world where we will rebuild the cities where we will drain the blood from the fields where grasses will once again grow into wind. I know I speak of suffering I am supposed to speak of suffering. And how this is the threshold, it is always the threshold …
Sometimes in the evening the twilight sinks so low as if to lie in ambush & its long golden body enters our houses where we are bent over our notes, cleaning up our drafts … As it sinks below the clouds the light slides in even further. I do not dare turn around to see it. I think I feel it touching my neck, tapping my shoulder. I almost hear its voice moving too easily through the empty branches. And I envy the poets who are free to cry out as I turn in my copy, the day’s final report, unless one more incendiary device goes off and I have to revise again how many managed to get out in time. It is never many. It is meant to be none.
This poem appears in the January 2026 print edition.
The post The Eloquence appeared first on The Atlantic.
