Goya

Black eyes,

Silver bullets.

I am the werewolf

You kill in dreams,

The witch

In your gloomy woods.

Spain,

Black nun, laughing witch,

Maiden, mother, whore,

Are these poisons to your taste?

Are these bitters sweet enough?

Even now the bull runs onto the sword.

This is my pride:

To pass through the nun’s veil of night,

To wander among the howling dead,

And return to the living

Crying: All this I have seen with my own eyes…

A hero? A martyr?

No, I am neither.

Nor do I wish to be.

Of heaven I know nothing,

Of hell all too much.

Agony and insult are my bedfellows,

Mockeries of mockeries

Distress my knelling head.

All this means less, so much less, to me

Than the smell of an orange

Or the light on watered silk,

The sweep of a woman’s buttocks.

Sword in hand,

In my bullfighter’s jacket,

I attack the canvas,

Ripping a hole

For the sky to shine through.