Thrall Read Online Free Page B

through
    the water’s bright ceiling
                      and I rose, initiate,
            from one life into another.

Enlightenment
In the portrait of Jefferson that hangs
    at Monticello, he is rendered two-toned:
his forehead white with illumination—
    Â 
a lit bulb—the rest of his face in shadow,
    darkened as if the artist meant to contrast
his bright knowledge, its dark subtext.
    Â 
By 1805, when Jefferson sat for the portrait,
    he was already linked to an affair
with his slave. Against a backdrop, blue
    Â 
and ethereal, a wash of paint that seems
    to hold him in relief, Jefferson gazes out
across the centuries, his lips fixed as if
    Â 
he’s just uttered some final word.
    The first time I saw the painting, I listened
as my father explained the contradictions:
    Â 
how Jefferson hated slavery, though—
out
    
of necessity,
my father said—had to own
slaves; that his moral philosophy meant
    Â 
he could not have fathered those children:
    
would have been impossible,
my father said.
For years we debated the distance between
    Â 
word and deed. I’d follow my father from book
    to book, gathering citations, listen
as he named—like a field guide to Virginia—
    Â 
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.
    Â 
I did not know then the subtext
    of our story, that my father could imagine
Jefferson’s words made flesh in my flesh—
    Â 
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
    Â 
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:
    Â 
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
    Â 
writ large at Monticello. That was years ago.
    Now, we take in how much has changed:
talk of Sally Hemings, someone asking,
    Â 
How white was she?
—parsing the fractions
    as if to name what made her worthy
of Jefferson’s attentions: a near-white,
    Â 
quadroon mistress, not a plain black slave.
    
Imagine stepping back into the past,
our guide tells us then—and I can’t resist
    Â 
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
    Â 
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.

How the Past Comes Back
Like shadow across a stone,
    gradually—
            the name it darkens;
    Â 
as one enters the world
            through language—
    like a child learning to speak
            then naming
everything; as
flower,
    Â 
the neglected hydrangea
            endlessly blossoming—
                      year after year
            each bloom a blue refrain; as
    Â 
the syllables of birdcall
    coalescing in the trees,
            repeating
a single word:
            forgets;
    Â 
as the dead bird’s bright signature—
            days