The Wreck of Time

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
It's human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window
Or just walking dully along...

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.


~ W H Auden