One more entry for National Poetry Month

Musee des Beaux Arts W.H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. 1940

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Pieter Breughel c. 1558; Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm; Musees royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels

This brilliant poem by W.H. Auden turns a painting by Breughel into words. Look, if you missed it, at the lower right hand corner of the painting where you see the leg of Icarus disappearing into the water.

On the evening of September 11, 2001, it came to mind and I sent it to a couple of friends. It explained the way I felt in the wake of that tragedy. Later I found out that not just myself, but thousands of people across the country had sent this poem to one another on September 11, 2001.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Pieter Breughel c. 1558; Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm; Musees royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels

This brilliant poem by W.H. Auden turns a painting by Breughel into words. Look, if you missed it, at the lower right hand corner of the painting where you see the leg of Icarus disappearing into the water.

On the evening of September 11, 2001, it came to mind and I sent it to a couple of friends. It explained the way I felt in the wake of that tragedy. Later I found out that not just myself, but thousands of people across the country had sent this poem to one another on September 11, 2001.