Streets opening like wounds: Madrid's. The thresh 
Of resistance ends before a tumbled wall; 
The coward and the cursing sprawl 
Brotherly, one white heap of flesh 
Char-mouthed and boneyard black. 
A woman, dragged off, howls— a lively sack 
Of loot. An infant, fallen on its back, 
Scowls from the stones at the Herodian lark. 
Light is the monster fattening on this dark. 

If shadow takes cadavers for her chair, 
Where fresh fires glare life lifts a wolfish snout. 
Bruised and abused by hope, the rout, 
Turning, is gunned across the square 
And scattered. Rope, knife, lead 
Slice prayer short. A lolling head 
Grins, as with toothache. Stubbornly, the dead 
Thrust forward like a beggar's senseless claw. 
What is scrawled there in acid? THIS I SAW. 

Beyond the Madonnas and marbles, Goya's brute 
Testament pits itself against the hush 
Of the blond halls, the urbane crush — 
Against the slat-eyed, the astute, 
Craning, against the guard, who yawns. 
And pits itself in vain: this dark, these dawns, 
Vomit of an old war, things the nightmare spawns 
Are pictures at an exhibition. We 
Look, having viewed too much, and cannot see.