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: Wystan Hugh Auden 1907 - 1973 born in York, England,wrote this poem in response to a painting he had seen in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. Auden visited the museum in 1938 and viewed the painting of " The fall of Icarus" a figure from classical Greek literature who built wings to fly from and foolishly flew too close to the sun melting the wax binding them together and causing him to fall into the sea and drown by artist Brueghel, The poem juxtaposes ordinary events and exraordinary ones, although extraordinary events seem to deflate to everyday ones with his descriptions. Life goes on while a "miraculous birth occurs", but also while "the disaster" of Icarus's death happens....heres the link to the page with the sound file... : http://groups.msn.com/acousticmusiciansandpoetssoundarchive/poetrysounds.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=262 : Regards. : Jim Clark : All rights are reserved on this sound recording/copyright/patent Jim Clark 2003 : : Musee des beax arts (The fall of Icarus) : 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, pionately 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 r'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.

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