The minute was good enough

Poem by Dana Littlepage Smith

Yet what of that time can be explained?
Are we engaged or are we looking away?
Can we expunge her eyes as she looked back

from the boat shipping her to Barbados without husband,
friend or child? Sweet Parthenia did you have faith in us,
the unborn, friends to go in search of your name?

billypennbillypennbillypenn –
Blessed be the memory
but who controls the naming – of you, of your enslaved?

Jack and Parthenia and Chevalier.
Susannah daughter of Sam and Sue.
Susannah’s husband Virgil Warder…

Who took that minute, my beloved? 
To acknowledge the good and the bad, 
as the branded flesh burned its no name.

The discernment continued with Friends.
The tendering. The sufferings.
Yet what are we handing on?

The erasure of shackledown nights,
the ironmangle of uncountable days?
The issues are sensitive.

Yes. The issues are sensitive.
Yet I think we’ve reached the point now
where the disappeared might have a minute.

Where the erased might be given back…
something… billypennbillypennjackandparthenia
Susannah. Chevalier.

Dana says: ‘This poem was written in response to the Meetings for Sufferings report, 10 April, which included news of the renaming of the William Penn room at Friends House. There is a film about Jack and Parthenia, two of the people William Penn enslaved: People Not Property: Jack & Parthenia’s Story, from Cruz Dann Productions. The video is available at https://vimeo.com/372408205.’

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