Dollar Eyes: Painted despair over Guernica

By Henrik Eger

When the Museum of Modern Art
at last was moved
to tears
and then to various sheds,
many Manhattans away,
it looked like the end
of a movie,
made
reels of laughter
ago.

Today’s reality, however,
heightened by somber colors
of individual protest in public,
and TV-framed to fill the gaps
between commercials,

this happening was starker,
darker,
than all inflations
behind star-spangled
suits and stripes.


It made no cents
to lovers, deprived of art,

GUERNICA: Famous, mural-sized oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (June 1937),
depicting the suffering of the people of Guernica.

and very little
to the silent majority’s
dollar eyes,
glued to their sets
next door--
within spitting distance
of painted despair
over Guernica.*

Photo above: The ruins of Guernica (Die Ruinen von Guernica), German Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv), 5603/37

* The bombing of Guernica (26 April 1937) was an aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. It was carried out at the behest of the Spanish nationalist, Fascist government under General Franco by its allies (Hitler and Mussolini)--the German Air Force's Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria, under the code name: Operation Rügen. 

“The bombing is considered one of the first raids on a defenseless civilian population by a modern air force." 

Spring 1981, Updated 30 August 2015

If you are interested in publishing or adapting this copyrighted poem by setting it to music, staging or filming it, etc., please contact the author. 

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