What is There for The Dog
(Goya painting, circa 1819-1823)
O, ’tis a round swelling mound,
coming out from nowhere.
Go up you must,
absent an explanation
for any existence of it.
Even if you cannot know what it is,
at least you want to know
what is next.
What can you do on it?
What can you do?
Perplexed for answer,
will it rise against you
or,
will you ride?
Whichever,
this is a reality
from which there is no choosing.
For this is the immediacy found
in being mounted on the back
of the likes of a monster.
Here is not a question of agreement
or non-agreement.
That is not the rolling point.
There is only the need to surmount
what you are seeing.
Even should you be a lion,
this would not help.
From a far off somewhere,
you overhear an abandoned name.
Time to lay back your ears
and do what is right in your eyes.
Do not waiver in your will
because of vastness.
Vastness is.
It will always be.
For after all,
if you fail,
can you suffer the fall?
When visiting the Prado, I was confronted by this painting which I had seen only in books. Seen at scale, it stunned me and left a lasting sense of awe with this early (first- ever?) extensive use of negative space by a painter.