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 especially
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 Brueghel'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.