Saturn
Only one painting tells the human truth:
the blood-stained jaws, the instruments of pain
that champ on arm and neck -- so seen in Spain,
so thought in every land and time – on youth,
on age, on health, on sick decrepitude.
We all move on toward those open teeth,
that gaping mouth, the gullet underneath,
the maw digesting life and all life’s brood.
I see that face not quite as Goya saw.
The thing’s a munching skull; it has no limbs;
its gut is Nothing, and each eye’s a hole,
and all is black beyond its fleshless jaw.
No use at all to flatter That with hymns:
your Father has no ears: he’ll eat you whole.