Goya (July)

Francisco Goya makes a hot-air balloon look like a painful product pulled from the Earth. Or the Earth itself aloft, dragging itself into space without aid of gravity. Goya never witnessed spacemen’s pictures of the planet, but was conversant with globes. Short-lived is its free flight above a world where families make ends meet, merchants make meetings end, and armies meet their makers’ ends. July’s an unlikely time for balloons, mornings barely enlightened, the Yarra gloomy miles of reserve. It trembles, ascends, its weight ready to be blown off-course or fall flaming into an innocent street. Decorations won’t help then.