Goya's Fight With Cudgels    

            The wars we haven't had saved many lives.
                �William Stafford

An oily sky. Gray plain. Two men, the same
man�doubled or halved, so much alike
are they, facing each other, clubs pulled back
to swing. Sun going down as though the light
despairs. I was eleven. Sampson's
eyes had been gouged out�and did he cry?

I would have cried. He must have. Did men cry?
I'd never seen one. Were they the same
as me? Icicles dripped from the eve. Sampson,
I decided, cried. We were alike:
pain made it so. In Goya now that light
is going out. Those men with clubs pulled back

have given up on hope. No going back,
unless a voice�someone's�utters a cry�
Think what you do!�but who? (Icicle light
is sharp.) I read beside the lamp. The same
two tanks (LIFE magazine, a spread), alike,
faced off: one was ours, one Russian. Sampson

was my alter-ego hero: Sampson
taking and taking it�blind�on his back.
Which tank was which? Our president was Ike�
one's good, he said, one bad. This mimicry,
I thought, made us our enemy: the same
tanks, those men inside the same, the light

around me warm like a kind voice, this light
a balm. Let them not, I thought, blind Sampson:
let him see. And let them see how same
all of us are. May one tank pull back
and may the one inside step out and cry
stop: Russians, Americans, alike

as like can be: don't shoot yourself! I like
the girl I was that afternoon. The light
loved me and loved my light. Our light's a cry
that we must see to hear. I can't save Sampson�
so I thought�but I will love him back.
Now Goya's light's suspended: two men samesame,

who've not yet swung. May yet cry out, step back,
see through Sampson's eyes how same they are,
how scared�and like the light around them.