Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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 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 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 strung-out citizens
                                                       in painted cars
       and they have strange license plates
and engines
                   that devour America