Thrall by Natasha Trethewey

Miracle of the Black Leg
Pictorial representations of the physician-saints Cosmas and Damian and the myth of the miracle transplant—black donor, white recipient—date back to the mid-fourteenth century, appearing much later than written versions of the story.
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    1.
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Always, the dark body hewn asunder; always
    one man is healed, his sick limb replaced,
placed in the other man’s grave: the white leg
    buried beside the corpse or attached as if
it were always there. If not for the dark appendage
    you might miss the story beneath this story—
what remains each time the myth changes: how,
    in one version, the doctors harvest the leg
from a man, four days dead, in his tomb at the church
    of a martyr, or—in another—desecrate a body
fresh in the graveyard at Saint Peter in Chains:
    
there was buried just today an Ethiopian.
Even now, it stays with us: when we mean to uncover
    the truth, we dig, say
unearth.
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    2.
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Emblematic in paint, a signifier of the body’s lacuna,
    the black leg is at once a grafted narrative,
a redacted line of text, and in this scene a dark stocking
    pulled above the knee. Here the patient is sleeping,
his head at rest in his hand. Beatific, he looks as if
    he’ll wake from a dream. On the floor
beside the bed, a dead
Moor
—hands crossed at the groin,
    the swapped limb white and rotting, fused in place.
And in the corner, a question: poised as if to speak
    the syntax of sloughing, a snake’s curved form.
It emerges from the mouth of a boy like a tongue—slippery
    and rooted in the body as knowledge. For centuries
this is how the myth repeats: the miracle—in words
    or wood or paint—is a record of thought.
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    3.
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See how the story changes: in one painting
    the
Ethiop
is merely a body, featureless in a coffin,
so black he has no face. In another, the patient—
    at the top of the frame—seems to writhe in pain,
the black leg grafted to his thigh. Below him
    a mirror of suffering: the
blackamoor—
his body a fragment—arched across the doctor’s lap
    as if dying from his wound. If not immanence,
the soul’s bright anchor—blood passed from one
    to the other—what knowledge haunts each body,
what history, what phantom ache? One man always
    low, in a grave or on the ground, the other
up high, closer to heaven; one man always diseased,
    the other a body in service, plundered.
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    4.
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Both men are alive in Villoldo’s carving.
    In twinned relief, they hold the same posture,
the same pained face, each man reaching to touch
    his left leg. The black man, on the floor,
holds his stump. Above him, the doctor restrains
    the patient’s arm as if to prevent him touching
the dark amendment of flesh. How not to see it—
    the men bound one to the other, symbiotic—
one man rendered expendable, the other worthy
    of this sacrifice? In version after version, even
when the
Ethiopian
isn’t there, the leg is a stand-in,
    a black modifier against the white body,
a piece
cut off
—as in the origin of the word
comma:
    caesura in a story that’s still being written.

On Captivity
Being all Stripped as Naked as We were Born, and endeavoring to hide our Nakedness, these Cannaballs took [our] Books, and tearing out the Leaves would give each of us a Leaf to cover us . . .
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—Jonathan Dickinson, 1699
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At the hands now
    of their captors,