Southampton County Will 1745

I, Etheldred Taylor, of sound mind and body

in the presence of God almighty amen

do deed three things:

Books Negroes Land.

(Accumulations pass each to a son.)

I find his will, pen in hand.

Shift my books, hurt to see.

From his dim ghost I inherit

everything, nothing:

One silver teaspoon. Half a name.

II.

In another ink-smear, crazed genealogy:

Jefferson, indebted, sold his own books

to form the first national library.

He bought more.

Wrote: "I cannot live without books,"

then died in a debt greater than the nation's.

III.

In botanies, wild turkey stalk islands,

each painted plume shimmering as

all that lay west—

I have seen continents strewn

with theatrical objects, women's bodies

open as plunder

even in the margins of the most accurate maps.

IV.

Bestiaries, night-blooming flowers.

Model orreries. Anatomies. German philosophy.

Cabinetry, every Palladian vision—

I was taught: He could not afford to free his slaves.

"Most valuable for their number ever offered at one time in the state of Virginia"

said the newspaper his granddaughter's husband published.

FOR AUCTION: Furniture, family.

Faded ink yellow as bruises

now underscores his "tall walls of high Rome."

I can trace the names of his white children's descendants.

Where the enslaved went after auction

is partial—

not all written down.

In any archive, fingering pages,

I am enthralled by gilt work, silk,

leather, the quill stroke's turn.

Feel physical want

for ink as if desiring the conquest

of tongues. And feel my pen's weight:

Whose life was traded?

Luxury of blind and delicate pages.

On which spines does this volume rest?