In Goyas Greatest Scenes We Seem to See ...Lawrence Ferlinghetti

In Goyas Greatest Scenes We Seem to See ...
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

In Goyas 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