You Will Know Us By Our Art by Mary Amato

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You Will Know Us By Our Art
by Mary Amato

Humbly-knitted, rough woolen caps 
stand in their own glass case
here in the Rijks Museum
among the Rembrandts and Vermeers.
The caps don’t lie flat, 
as if in a drawer.
They perch upright, rounded out
as if on the heads of their owners,
whalers from the 17th century.

Varied in color, pattern, and shape:
comically tall, 
serious and squat,
tipsy and crumpled,
content to be plain,
thrilled with stripes, 
turned at the rim,
nibbed at the crown.

Each made by someone—a mother? A wife? 
A daughter? The whaler himself?
Crafted to keep the wearer warm 
and more—to identify the man. 
Bundled from foot to face
against the cold,
these sons and husbands and fathers
were recognized only 
by the singularity of their caps.
This is why, in 1980, these works 
were found on the white skulls of the skeletons 
of these men in their graves.

Yes, they bear the teethmarks of time:
the colors faded, yarn thin here and there.
But these wools, shorn, scoured, spun, 
dyed and knitted into these forms, 
triumphed over oxygen’s appetite,
escaped accidents, indifference, and 
acts of malice. These caps 
worn each cold dawn of life and
borne into the deep hold of death, 
these caps that testified
in the dark all those years,
these caps are here now
and still they proclaim:
You will know us by our art.

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