In Goya’s greatest scenes we seem to see.. by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

In Goya’s greatest scenes we seem to see

the people of the world

exactly at the moment when

they first attained the title of

‘suffering humanity’

They writhe upon the page

in a veritable rage

of adversity

Heaped up

groaning with babies and bayonets

under cement skies

in an abstract landscape of blasted trees

bent statues bats wings and beaks

slippery gibbets

cadavers and carnivorous cocks

and all the final hollering monsters

of the

‘imagination of disaster’

they are so bloody real

it is as if they really still existed

And they do

Only the landscape is changed

They still are ranged along the roads

plagued by legionnaires

false windmills and demented roosters

They are the same people

only further from home

on freeways fifty lanes wide

on a concrete continent

spaced with bland billboards

illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness

The scene shows fewer tumbrils

but more strung-out citizens

in painted cars

and they have strange license plates

and engines

that devour America