My master/father sent me up from South
Carolina to Boston as a nine-year-old.
My mother’s illiterate silence has been a death.
I wonder if she still labors in his fields.
His sister, dutiful but cold as snow,
gave me a little room in her house, below
the stairs with the Irish servants, who hated me
for the fatal flaw in my genealogy.
For the first time in my life I am at home
in this bevy of scholars, my first family.
Here, the wallpapers welcome me into every room,
and the mirrors see me, not my pedigree.
My sisters, Jerusha, Emilia, Elizabeth …
But Mama’s unlettered silence is a death.
Marilyn Nelson, “Family” from Faster Than Light: New and Selected Poems, 1996-2011. Copyright © 2012 by Marilyn Nelson. Reprinted by permission of Marilyn Nelson.
Source: Faster Than Light: New and Selected Poems, 1996-2011 (Louisiana State University Press, 2012)
Leave a Reply