Robeson at Rutgers

Hard to picture, but these Goliath trees are taller still than Robeson. Outside vast plate windows in this lecture hall, I imagine him running down autumn fields, see his black thighs pumping that machinery across chalk-painted lines. He loved the woman in the lab, Eslanda, who saw order in swimming circles on inch-wide slides, who made photographs. I picture her standing in darkness, led by red light, bathing paper in broth, extracting images. Did this woman smile to watch white paper darken, to pull wet from the chemicals Paul Robeson’s totem face?