Contributor: Clare Brant
Goya’s Dog
In the Ermita San Antonio de la Florida, a chapel in Madrid with frescoes by Goya, there is a circular scene around the cupola. It shows St Antony raising a man back to life in order to answer the question: who murdered him? The saint’s father has been accused; the corpse says he was not the murderer – but does not say who was. A crowd watches: in contemporary dress, all sorts of characters look on, in all sorts of attitudes. Among the figures is a hunchback with a beautiful dog, a brown hound, who leans forward towards the saint with more attention than many of the people.
I’ve seen that dog, loping beside its brute master
a she, I think, born affectionate and curious
quizzical about the human world
given to sniffing the hems of robes
friar, woman, beggar
her keeper, who will never have a woman
unless he kidnaps one
loves this dog so much
he will go hungry to let her feed
first pick of scraps
last bite of crust
she’s silky-eared, a maja, chocolate velvet
a beauty he can only glimpse lopsidely
all handsome, as he with hunch and broken grin will never be
all ears, to hear this saint
the keeper thinks the saint is smart
he’s on to something, surely
charging to raise the dead
you’d never run out of customers
the dog has heard something different
under a smell of piety, a hunger for the truth
urgency of question
moral emergency
playful, obedient, meek and sad
her big brown eyes are soulful
can a dog go to heaven by being good
she wonders, stretching the question
in long arched neck, flat ears
and listening to the saint
she wonders why
in this beautiful world
truth is in short supply.
Note: close-up photographs reveal the dark shape is human shoulder, back and body. That it looks exactly like a hound from below is an optical illusion: deliberate, by a dog-loving artist?
