The Slave and the Iron Lace
The craving of Samuel Rouse for clearance to create
was surely as hot as the iron that buffeted him. His passion
for freedom so strong that it molded the smouldering fashions
he laced, for how also could a slave plot
or counterplot such incomparable shapes,
form or reform, for house after house,
the intricate Patio pattern, the delicate
Rose and Lyre, the Debutante Settee,
the complex but famous Grape; frame the classic vein
in an iron bench?
How could he turn an iron Venetian urn, wind the Grape Vine, chain
the trunk of a pine with a Round-the-Tree-settee,
mold a Floating Flower tray, a French chair—create all this
in such exquisite fairyland taste, that he’d be freed
and his skill would still resound a hundred years after?
And I wonder if I, with this thick asbestos glove of an
attitude could lace, forge and bend this ton of lead-chained spleen surrounding me?
Could I manifest and sustain it into a new free-form screen
of, not necessarily love, but (at the very least, for all concerned) grace.
Notes:
Samuel Rouse was an enslaved Black artisan whose ironwork decorated certain historical residences of New Orleans.
From To Flower (Hemphill Press First Edition, 1963).
This work is part of the portfolio “‘These Blazing Forms’: The Life and Work of Margaret Danner” from the March 2022 issue.
Source:
Poetry
(March 2022)
