Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhoon coming on (The Slave Ship)

Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhon coming on (The Slave Ship), JMW Turner



Before You Read the Plaque About Turner's "Slave Ship"*

See the bare canvas. A pure white
bone that splits the sky's
weak, warm skin of colors.

What will be left on the ocean floor,
What will be left under the swells,
What will be left is unspeakable
and vivid and not the vicious beauty
of cracking masts against the atmosphere
writing lines of blood. Not the blended light,
or the curious gulls. Not the market's
fanacious hope.

Not the gods' desperation to include us in this disaster,
without our will. But the bare, bright,
smoothed bones of many, many hands,

so cold, down where the master
could not imagine,
could not light
the darkest depths.


~ David Wright


Note: This is one of the most intense paintings I have seen, in real tiem and space it is imposing on consciousness. And with the content on conscience.

Also, couldnt manage to publish to original spacing of the poem, Html challenged sorry.