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 pa**ionately 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