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 existed
And they do

    Only the landscape changed

They still are ranged along the roads
    plagued by legionaires
            false windmills and demented roosters

    We are the same people
                    only further from home
        on freeways fifty lanes wide
            on a concrete continent
                spaced with billboards
            illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness
The scene shows fewer tumbrels
                but more strung-out citizens
                            in painted cars   
    and they have strange license plates
and engines
        that devour America