Goya’s Fight with Cudgels, by James Swafford

Fight with Cudgels by Francisco Goya y Lucientes (Spain) c. 1820-23

Goya’s Fight with Cudgels

They meet on an open field, north of the village,
on a peaceful morning, with official permission,                                
to bash out each other’s brains.
One bleeds from scalp and eyebrow, struck
by a lucky backhand.  The other raises a 
weak defensive elbow while both swing
wildly from the heels.  Or would, if they                                 
had heels.  Their lower legs have gone missing.  
No matter.  Neither intends to flee.
A couple of distant cattle might or might not
be paying any attention.  Nobody else.
Except the invisible painter, sitting nearby
for a waist-high view of the backlit pair who,
from this perspective, loom heroically large.
At home, Goya, old and deaf, pulls up a chair                        
to gaze at his mural, too big for this modest room.
The men tower like the mountains and the clouds,
colossal.  But terrified.  Stupid.  Doomed. 

James Swafford
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James Swafford has recently begun writing poetry after a forty-year career teaching other people’s poems, mostly at Ithaca College in New York.  He lives in Toronto.