Realization

Three-quarter size. Full size would break the heart.
She, still bare-breasted from the auction block,
sits staring, perhaps realizing what
will happen to them next. There is no child,
though there must be a child who will be left
behind, or who was auctioned separately.
Her arms are limp, defeated, her thin hands
lie still in surrender.
He cowers at her side,
his head under her arm,
his body pressed to hers
like a boy hiding behind his mother.
He should protect his woman. He is strong,
his shoulder and arm muscled from hard work,
his hand, thickened by labor, on her thigh
as if to comfort, though he can’t protect.
His brow is furrowed, his eyes blank, unfocused.
What words are there to describe hopelessness?
A word that means both bull-whipped and spat on?
Is there a name for mute, depthless abyss?
A word that means Where the hell are you, God?
What would they ask God, if they could believe?
But how can they believe, while the blue sky
smiles innocently, pretends nothing is wrong.
They stood stripped up there, as they were described
like animals who couldn’t understand
how cheap a life can be made.
Their naked feet. Her collarbone. The vein
traveling his bicep. Gussie’s answer
to presidents on Mount Rushmore,
to monumental generals whose stars
and sabers say black pain
did not then and still does not matter.

Copyright © 2021 by Marilyn Nelson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 5, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“‘Realization’ is an ekphrastic poem, a description of an almost life-sized portrayal of a Black couple, created in the late 1930’s by the great Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage (whom the poem calls ‘Gussie’). I take Savage’s piece as depicting the scene following a human auction, the ‘realization’ of the title naming their understanding of what their future holds. This poem will appear in my book called Augusta Savage: The Shape of a Life, which will be released in September.”
—Marilyn Nelson