Friday, January 29, 2010

'Musee Des Beaux Arts'



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.

- W.H Auden

(a postscript for Greer).

14 comments:

  1. I'd semi-expected a J D Salinger post on today's Ghosty blog

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  2. Understandable. Sorry to disappoint. If it's any consolation, I'll shove something Friday nightish up later.

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  3. No disappointment at all..

    PS I'll be out tonight - blog-meet and all that..

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  4. That's it, isn't it? Beautiful.

    There are still so many gaps in my reading MrH. Auden is a big one.

    x

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  5. I was able to pick up a copy this weekend. Thank you sir- it can be diffifult to know where to start x.

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  6. Oh yes, my friend, how wonderful he was!

    Lay your sleeping head, my love,
    Human on my faithless arm;
    Time and fevers burn away
    Individual beauty from
    Thoughtful children, and the grave
    Proves the child ephemeral:
    But in my arms till break of day
    Let the living creature lie,
    Mortal, guilty, but to me
    The entirely beautiful.

    x

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  7. We could put together a splendid Wystan 'comp' dear boy.

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  8. Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
    And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

    Without doubt, old boy.

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  9. can't beat a bit of auden picked up these 2 recently only got round to transcribing the larkin need to do wha.
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bltpicons/3822862168/

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  10. S'funny, I was thinking of Larkin as a future 'poem post' only today.

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