Poetry For People / The Famous Stuff
This is probably my favorite poem of all time. When someone says “poem”, it’s the one I always think of first. And judging by the rest of the world in websites and blogs, I’m not the only one. So, I know that it has been placed around here countless times, but I’m going to add it in just once more.
I have two other poems on the Icarus theme that I will be posting this week. Those might not be AS popular so it will give a fresh take on an old subject. I even did a critical literary analysis comparing the three for a college paper. Exciting stuff. Maybe if someone asks nice or begs originally, I’ll just post it on up. And if nobody says anything, I might just post it anyway.
Here it is. The one, the only:
Musée des Beaux Arts by 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 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.
just shy of pretty 
Debora Neverman said,
September 13, 2019 at 2:56 am
Howdy! I could have sworn I’ve been to this site before but after browsing through many of the posts I realized it’s new to me. Nonetheless, I’m certainly happy I discovered it and I’ll be book-marking it and checking back regularly!