Enlightenment BY NATASHA TRETHEWEY

 

In the portrait of Jefferson that hangs

        at Monticello, he is rendered two-toned:

his forehead white with illumination —

a lit bulb — the rest of his face in shadow,

        darkened as if the artist meant to contrast

his bright knowledge, its dark subtext.

By 1805, when Jefferson sat for the portrait,

        he was already linked to an affair

with his slave. Against a backdrop, blue

and ethereal, a wash of paint that seems

        to hold him in relief, Jefferson gazes out

across the centuries, his lips fixed as if

he's just uttered some final word.

        The first time I saw the painting, I listened

as my father explained the contradictions:

 

how Jefferson hated slavery, though — out

        of necessity, my father said — had to own

slaves; that his moral philosophy meant

 

he could not have fathered those children:

        would have been impossible, my father said.

For years we debated the distance between

word and deed. I'd follow my father from book

        to book, gathering citations, listening

as he named — like a field guide to Virginia —

each flower and tree and bird as if to prove

        a man's pursuit of knowledge is greater

than his shortcomings, the limits of his vision.

I did not know then the subtext

        of our story, that my father could imagine

Jefferson's words made flesh in my flesh —

 

the improvement of the blacks in body

        and mind, in the first instance of their mixture

with the whites — or that my father could believe

he'd made me better. When I think of this now,

        I see how the past holds us captive,

its beautiful ruin etched on the mind's eye:

my young father, a rough outline of the old man

        he's become, needing to show me

the better measure of his heart, an equation

writ large at Monticello. That was years ago.

        Now, we take in how much has changed:

talk of Sally Hemings, someone asking,

How white was she? — parsing the fractions

        as if to name what made her worthy 

of Jefferson's attentions: a near-white,

quadroon mistress, not a plain black slave.

        Imagine stepping back into the past, 

our guide tells us then — and I can't resist

whispering to my father: This is where

        we split up. I'll head around to the back. 

When he laughs, I know he's grateful

I've made a joke of it, this history

        that links us — white father, black daughter —

even as it renders us other to each other.

Natasha Trethewey, "Enlightenment" from Thrall. Copyright © 2012 by Natasha Trethewey.  Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

‘RETURN’ AND ‘SILENT’ by Elizabeth Gibson

Return

 

I don’t know how we go on, some nights, how I live –

I get antsy and want to walk to the ends of the earth

to save trees and turtles, wear the same jeans and shirt,

go barefoot and vegan: it all seems easy pared down

to a sky of doom and all of this life ending and aching.

 

There is a romance in fighting, a purity in resistance,

a loss that for once feels right and good and survivable,

as your gold rings and silver bangles slip off and away.

Just me and the wonderful, wise woman you will be,

our life given to service, nothing left over when we go.

 

And yet the city is always dark and cold and too fast

and you never come, or else you don’t stay long enough

for me to ask the question, or maybe I am just too weak.

I keep buying, books and chocolates and shower gels,

keep using my heater to desperately warm up my bed.

 

I earnt my money. This is the best time of your life,

I was told by an ex of sorts, when you finish studying.

I had a honeymoon winter when I felt it, I really did,

would spend my evenings alone in Italian restaurants,

trying every dessert, thinking: surely this is happiness.

 

Then the little rebel in me who grew up with folk music

and a mother who spent her time on the campaign trail,

who wanted to save every fly and spider and little bird,

she tasted something in the air and she woke, stretched,

felt truth welcome her back and caress her like a lover.

 

 

---

 

Silent

 

“Unlike other big cats, snow leopards cannot roar.” – WWF website

 

I made you silent, leopard, and I wonder whether to regret it.

Yet when you run grey in grey, silver in silver, silence into

silence, I wonder whether all I made should have been mute.

*To roar does not occur until you suggest it. I have no need*

 

I made them speaking, shouting: negotiating hunts, industry.

Their capacity for language soon gave way to noise, melting

away your quiet land, pulling the snow from under your feet.

*The sounds of the mountains are sufficient. Listen, function*

 

You do not talk, my leopard – does that mean you do not feel?

Physically you can writhe as your skin is stripped but mentally

do you hurt? Do you think, articulate to yourself anger, grief?

*I do not know. I know heat, cold, hunger, exhaustion. Need*

 

If all you do comes from instinct, pure survival your compass,

is that sweeter, better? Perhaps I should have made them like

that: no dreams or desire, laziness or love, greed or gratitude.

*They climb here. They huddle in pairs, display dependency*

 

Maybe then this earth ball would not be burning and crumbling

into itself, decaying, as their passion turns them to destruction.

Maybe they could live quietly, doing the necessary to continue.

*Some chase us, others just observe the view, eyes snowing*

 

But as you hurtle across the silver, impatient to get back, drop

down, hold out your rabbit offering to smaller versions of you,

I think maybe you do feel – that silently, harmlessly, you love.

*Their life outweighs mine. I do not know what that is called*

*****

KEEPING QUIET by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Poem by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky

"I am a candle. I burned at the feast.

Gather my wax when morning arrives

so that this page will remind you

how to be proud and how to weep,

how to give away the last third

of happiness, and how to die with ease—

and beneath a temporary roof

to burn posthumously, like a word."

~Andrei Tarkovsky

Perhaps The World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

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The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

From The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo.