I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown.

This summer, at an artist retreat in Italy, I took morning walks with new friends. We hailed from all parts of the globe.

One does large-scale photographs. Another does sound

sound installation, another a painter, a filmmaker, a composer, and like me, a poet.

Some of us Americans. and like me a poet.

Some of us Americans, one of us from Ukraine,

another from Palestine, another from the Philippines.

Through fields of bright red poppies, our talk mostly covered our projects, the joys of making art,

the fine balance of caring for elders and children while tending to our practices.

Eventually, a few began to testify to political realities as the backdrop to their art making.

An Iranian friend shared her story about how she and her family fled war in the 80s.

My father decided to stay through the first wave of attacks, she said. Life

went on, but with fighting around us. Fear was in abundance. Food was not, she said. Her father made a different choice

when a neighboring country invaded again. They were able to escape through cunning and influence.

Her work powerfully addresses displacement and complicates notions of home.

For stateless people, writing poems, taking pictures, composing songs is precarious, but making art happens nonetheless.

Often it is a counter insistence on one's presence on Earth.

Today's poem is a humanizing statement of profound sorrow born of conflict and exile.

From Elegi for the Times by Adonis, translated by Robin Creswell.

Trucks of exile cross the borders through songs of exile and sighing flames. The wind is against us and the ash of war covers the earth.

We see our spirit flash on a razor blade, a helmet's curve.

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