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 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 has changed
They still are ranged along the roads
…………. plagued by legionaires
…………………………………….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 maimed citizens
…………………………………………… in painted cars
…………. and they have strange license plates
….and engines
…………………… that devour America
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
from A Coney Island of the Mind
New Direction Books, 1958