Goya’s Damned* You don’t expect the heath: after nightfall, in your nightshirt, the late October air frigid, stars receding, the moon in a septic haze, as you cower and tremble, and the wind roars, faintly cackling. You don’t expect emissaries, certainly not the demon kind: in black cloaks, with blood-soaked glares, teeth falling out, bats and owls like flies clawing at their heads. You don’t imagine music either: dark, runic strains intoned, dragged from the bowels, throats, of hairless hags, the devil rattling old bones through your marrow, their wails bubbling in bile. And how could you even begin to fathom the innocents—in a basket, gnarled, ash-skinned, they squeak like snared rats pinned to each bottomless curse, each bone-thump, to succumb to souls that never saw light, ever borne to their doom? But least of all do you expect the one draped in gold: the sightless crone, her laying on of groping hands: offering, in your fatal descent, surrender, in her touch, a bitter embrace: the last moan, and final release, of the damned. *This poem was first published in The Ekphrastic Review in November, 2019, as part of a challenge to readers. Find a nice selection of other poetic responses to Goya's painting, here.
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Wow this is great - passing it on
very colorful, right with the painting.