1. Goya’s War

We may have forgotten Napoleon’s treachery,

Or the weakness of the cuckolded Spanish king,                                                               

But fear is indelible in war’s faceless victims.

So Goya shows us in his shallow canvas

Where a square lantern is the only dawn light 

That will direct the flow of darkness

From the fixed bayonets of the fusiliers.

But it will never arrive to tear the breast

Of the terrified civilian in his shirtsleeves,

Or smash the warm bodies of those 

Whose eyes can only now half-await 

The bullets. Because they will never arrive. 

As in Zeno’s Paradox, art suspends 

The actual. Death, though certain, is always 

Coming, ever halfway getting there.