With two lines, Ferlinghetti pulls the realities of these observations on humanity from the Goya painting, placing them in a scene in the modern day America setting of the fifties, using a journey down an interstate freeway as an allegory into the musings on the twentieth century. It is interesting to follow this transition at work in the poem because it shows a technique used by the poet at work, as he moves from a concept in the aesthetic ideal of a painting into the real world dramatization in the stanza of his freeverse poem. From his first reference to Goya, he creates an almost pastoral poem, except that instead of describing the scenery of a springtime natural setting, Ferlinghetti descends into the madness of disease and chaos in a world gone array.
"In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see the people of the world
exactly at the moment when they first attained the title of 'suffering humanity'
They writhe upon the page in a veritable rage of adversity
Heaped up groaning with babies and bayonets under cement skies in an abstract landscape of blasted trees under cement skies (3)
This imagery continues until the transitonal stanza that I mentioned before; and points to one of the many strengths in Ferlinghetti's writing; for he possesses the ability to create a poem, build that poem towards a climax that moves forward into a transitonal center and then descends into a moving statement on a major theme. In this instance, the stanza continues a steady flow into the last concluding passage in this poem,
"they are so bloody real it is as if they really still existed
And they do Only the landscape is changed They still are ranged along the roads plagued by legionaires false windmills and demented roosters" (4)
The stanza like a piece from a set of musical notes forming a bridge in a classical musical compostion provides a tone for the poem, creates a melody building towards a theme that there are moments when America contains as many monstors as the horrors that he previously refers to in his Goya portrait of the imagination. He builds towards a feeling of acceptance and proves his conclusion well with:
"They are the same people only further from home on freeways fifty lanes wide on a concrete continent spaced with bland billboards illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness
The scene shows fewer tumbrils but more maimed citizens in painted cars and they have strange license plates
