Blue Jean

Here is one of the few great old poems that I can truly appreciate. It has long been my favorite and references a painting that I also love.
Enjoy

Musee des Beaux Arts
by W.H. Auden
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 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 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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This poem was dedicated to a lost friend, Adam. It makes me think of art and death. It was also featured as a prelude in the book of one of my favorite movies 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'.