On Francisco Goya’s painting of the same name.

He half-faced me, one square eye on the crowd
Of mourners, one fastening me.
He claimed,
Pain is the elixir of eternity.
So paint your features black, shriek out the sound
Of widow wails who clave until fate clave
Away, waft the rot of society,
That smell of burning waste, lick the ground
Whose maggot taste augments time; shun the grave
And piss on requiem and jubilee.
One bragged, My watch rusted before it wound
To six.
Another, Mine by one.
This knave,
Nine moons this week.
That wretch, Two more for me.
He summed up, Stay—life expands in decay.
I have lived a hundred years today.