After Auden, after Brueghel
by Marjorie Maddox
“About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters…” W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts
There is no turning away from this,
or there is, the sandy-toed raising a glass
to the Atlantic’s deep blue forever
just as Icarus plunges (or Brueghel’s Icarus,
or Auden’s memory of Brueghel’s Icarus),
a memory of a memory of someone else’s suffering:
just incidental peripheral on a bright day of hangovers
until the undertow tugs down the neighbor
they may know slightly from,
in some other season,
skating at the edge of the wood,
or petting their doggy dog,
or even lining up beside them
for the miraculous birth,
which, too, may be cancelled
along with any resurrections
if the day is predictably sunny,
the landscape ready to plow or paint,
and the stubborn wind,
just in from a tsunami,
distracted enough for a sail.
