Thrall

               

Kitchen Maid with Supper at Emmaeus;

or, The Mulata

                  After the painting by Diego Velásquez, c. 1619

                                                by Natasha Trethewey

She is the vessels on the table before her:

the copper pot tipped toward us, the white pitcher

clutched in her hand, the black one edged in red

and upside-down. Bent over, she is the mortar,

and the pestle at rest in the mortar -- still angled

in its posture of use. She is the stack of bowls

and the bulb of garlic beside it, the basket hung

by a nail on the wall and the white cloth bundled

in it, the rag in the foreground recalling her hand.

She’s the stain on the wall the size of her shadow --

the color of blood, the shape of a thumb. She is echo

of Jesus at table, framed in the scene behind her:

his white corona, her white cap. Listening, she leans

into what she knows. Light falls on half her face.

 

Thrall

             Juan de Pareja, 1670

         He was not my father

though      he might have been

         I came to him

the mulatto son

                   of a slave woman

        just that

as if       it took only my mother

       to make me

                    a mulatto

meaning

                   any white man

could be my father

            *

In his shop     bound

       to the muller

I ground his colors

       my hands dusted     black

with fired bone     stained 

      blue     and flecked

with glass     my nails

edged vermilion     as if

     my fingertips bled

In this way     just as

     I'd turned the pages

of his books

    I meant to touch

          everything he did

          *

With Velásquez     in Rome

     a divination

At market     I lingered to touch

     the bright hulls of lemons

          closed by eyes until

    the scent was oil

and thinner     yellow ocher

    in my head

         And once

the sudden taste of iron

         a glimpse of red

   like a wound-opening

         the robes of the pope

a portrait

         that bright shade of blood

         before it darkens

purpling nearly to black

           *

Because he said

        painting was not

        labor     was

the province of free men

       I could only 

watch     Such beauty

      in the work of his hands

               his quick  strokes

     a divine language I learned

over his shoulder

               my own hands

tracing the air

     in his wake     Forbidden

              to answer in paint

I kept my canvases secret

              hidden until

     Velásquez decreed

              unto me

     myself     Free

I was apprentice     he

             my master still

         *

How intently at times

      could he fix his keen eye

              upon me

though only once

     did he fix me     in paint

my color a study

     my eyes wide

             as I faced him

a lace collar at my shoulders

     as though I'd been born

             noble

     the yoke of my birth

gone from my neck

     In his hand     a long brush

            to keep him far

     from the canvas

far from it     as I was

     the distance between us

           doubled     that

he could observe me

     twice     stand closer

           to what he made

For years     I looked to it

     as one looks into a mirror

     *

                  And so

  in The Calling of Saint Matthew

     I painted my own

likeness     a freeman

     in the House of Customs

           waiting to pay

my duty     In my hand

     an answer     a slip of paper

           my signature on it

     Juan de Pareja     1661

Velásquez     one year gone

     Behind me

            upright on a shelf

a forged platter     luminous

            as an aureole

     just beyond my head

            my face turned

to look out from the scene

     a self-portrait

To make it

           I looked at how

my master saw me     then

     I narrowed my eyes

     *

Now

     at the bright edge

of sleep     mother

She comes back to me

    as sound

           her voice

in the echo of birdcall

    a single syllable

           again

and again     my name

    Juan Juan Juan

or     a bit of song    that

          waking

I cannot grasp 

 

 Natasha Trethewey, Thrall: Poems. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).

See also Blacks in Renaissance Painting.