How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Page)
Quote #1
But if I could read between the lines of her floor/like a white-hot deck uncaulked by Antillean heat,/to the shadows in its hold, its nostrils might flare/at the stench from manacled ankles, the coffled feet/scraping like leaves, and perhaps the inculpable marble/would have turned its white seeds away, to widen/the bow of its mouth at the horror under the table...to do what the past always does: suffer, and stare (II.ii.15)
The narrator maps the geography and past onto his ex-lover's body and home, and sees the horrors of an enslaved past peeking out from hidden places. He sees the "inculpable marble" (i.e., the bust of Homer)—which represents the romanticized version of history art prefers—as gawking in horror at true images of slavery.
Quote #2
He believed the swelling came from the chained ankles/of his grandfathers. Or else why was there no cure?/That the cross he carried was not only the anchor's/but that of his race, for a village black and poor/as the pigs that rooted in its burning garbage,/then were hooked on the anchors of the abattoir (III.iii.19)
Here we learn that Philoctete's wound is not simply a bad case of tetanus—it never heals because it's connected with the perpetual wound of a past that can't be changed. He imagines that he's inherited the wound from his ancestors who were chained, and that it is sustained by the poverty that keeps Philoctete and his fellows from participating in society.
Quote #3
A skeletal warrior/stood up straight in the stern and guided his shoulders,/clamped his neck in cold iron, and altered the oar./Achille wanted to scream, he wanted the brown water to harden into a road, but the river widened ahead/and closed behind him. (XXV.i.133-134)
Although Achille is returning to the settlement of his ancestors, the images of his transport are those of captivity. He is clamped in "cold iron" and forced away from his home, which, ironically, houses part of the African diaspora.