Vanitas with Negro Boy Poem by Rickey Laurentiis

(17th century, oil on canvas)


I'll show you a bone made to hold on to.
A pip. A dense fire in which once
the thinking imagination sprawled
like a breathing vine. He would put the skull
on the table (And nearest to the worn
flowers, sir, or nearer to the flute?) turned
just so so not to be too crude. That
was the boy's job, this cage with a debt
in it (And whose boy am I, and what is
my name?). Black erasing blackness,
body and backdrop: you are not permitted to enter
the question light asks of his skin as if it were
a field, a mind, a word inclined to be
entered. It's true: his face, his boyhood even
(And what is my boyhood, and where is it from?)
would fade if not for the rope of attention
yanked glittering across that face. Look.
This is my painting, my version of the Dutch
stilleven. I'm trying to write obsession
into it, and can. Open your eyes. Don't run.
Vanitas, from the Latin, for"emptiness,"
"meaningless"—but what nothing can exist
if thought does, if the drawn likeness of a bone
still exists? Why trust the Old Masters? Old
Masters, never trust me. Listen: each day
is a Negro boy, chained, slogging out of the waves,
panting, gripping the sum of his captain, the head,
ripped off, the blood purpling down, the red
hair flossed between the knuckles, swinging it
before him like judgment, saying to the mist,
then not, then quietly only to himself, This is what
I'll do to you, what you dream I do, sir, if you like it.