The Slave Ship, by Neil Silberblatt

The Slave Ship, by J.M.W. Turner (UK). 1840.

The Slave Ship*

Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds
Declare the Typhon's coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying - ne'er heed their chains
Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!
Where is thy market now?
        J. M. W. Turner (1812)

If one looks quickly,
passing this painting at the Fine Arts Museum in Boston,
one may see only a spectacular sunset,
         as only Turner could conjure,
harbinger of some biblical storm or maritime disaster and
miss entirely
the sharks and gulls in the lower right foreground
feeding on bloated corpses, which were not quite
lifeless when they were tossed
still chained
into the palegoldenwheat waves.

If one looks quickly,
one may see only the purplebloodred
fury of an approaching storm,
         as only Turner could conjure,
about to wreak its fury on a skeletal ship,
and perhaps feel sorry for her captain and crew,
without knowledge of her worthless,
but valuable, cargo. 

You can easily miss such small details 
when measured against
a magnificent sunset.

Neil Silberblatt
_________
*In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered his crew to throw 133 sick or dying slaves overboard so that insurance payments might be collected.  The incident inspired J.M.W. Turner to create this painting.

Neil Silberblatt's poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetica Magazine, The Aurorean, Two Bridges Review, Oddball Magazine, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Canopic Jar, First Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, and The Good Men Project. His work has been included in the anthology, Confluencia in the Valley: The First Five Years of Converging with Words (Naugatuck Valley Community College, 2013); and in University of Connecticut’s Teacher-Writer magazine. He has published two poetry collections: So Far, So Good (2012), and Present Tense (2013), and has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize.  He is the recipient of a grant from Wellfleet Cultural Council.  Neil is the founder/director of Voices of Poetry - which, since 2012, has presented poetry events at various venues throughout CT, NYC and MA.  He is also the host of Poet's Corner on WOMR/WFMR (out of Provincetown, MA), for which he has interviewed acclaimed poets & writers on and off the Cape.