Last night, I visited a captivity story.
I was sitting in a lean-to made of bark
with Ella Ruth, both of us teenagers—
her ebony skin, her black hair touching
her tailbone. I looked at her hard, &
she came back to sit beside the fire.
From a slit in the rawhide doorway
I could see my tribe in surgical masks,
& as dogs began to howl I woke up.
Strange how the mind finds tenderness
even in captivity. Or how amidst
this being held in isolation we dream
of masks. I see my ancestors, too,
at the Carnival of Venice, a bouquet
of myrrh, viper flesh, & honey
in the plague doctor’s long beak—
the face of death meant to ward off death.
They look back through the silver mirror.
Remember traveling to Siena,
& we entered that semi-dark room?
Those strange garments—the garb
worn by a secret society of men—
men who wore what we thought
were pale KKK robes & masks.
But they had cared for the contagious
sick, & escorted them to the here
& after, their faces always hidden.
Yes, we descended the Ospedale’s
winding stairs stories underground,
through a long hall to a hidden room
where a small medieval oil painting hung,
the Confraternity of the Night Oratory,
St. Catherine of Siena holds the brothers,
their faces coved in hoods & white robes,
under her cloak. They worked shifts
on behalf of the many struck with plague.
The hooded prisoners were led behind
medieval-thick walls, into their tiny cells
where solitary penitence was paid twenty-
three hours a day. No one dared to speak
at the Eastern State Penitentiary, eyes
staring always at the cold stone floors.
Beans, flourless bread, shad, lobster,
corn, peppers, & a few grains of salt.
Now, Al Capone had a rug & a radio.
On a poor man’s cell block, uncle Gussie,
who robbed a bank, spent years
in the prison built like a wagon wheel.
The low cell door forced him to bow
when entering; the skylight above—
the Eye of God—a reminder he was watched.
When his mother died, two brothers,
a priest & a cop, left sepia photographs
of the funeral. Now, cats & ghosts roam.
Lord, this big country. Land of plentitude
ravaged, heart & gut torn out in the name
of civilization & progress, & just plain old
unsung unction, low-down skullduggery
& theurgy. Nature ripped out by thew
toned in old world prisons. Horsepower.
Even with hard times here, hug the moon
devastatingly close, & beat down the door
with true love. Wherever you are, bless us.
Yeah, we’ve both known a few in the joint,
robbing Peter to pay Paul, or caught
blowing time with this one or that one.
Some excuse to keep rats on a wheel, or in a cage.
Look, time moves at least twice at once now—
back & forth, slow & fast. I held my palm
on my father’s back when he bent to whisper
in the ear of the dead, & two men in black
draped a white handkerchief over a face.
Copyright © 2020 by Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 12, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.