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 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.