Ordinary Tragedy

This is a classic example of what's called an "ekphrastic poem." It's usually a direct response to a visual work of art, but attempts to go further than merely another depiction of the same scene. Auden is a little more self-conscious about it, but is no less for it. 

Musée des Beaux Arts

W.H. Auden

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.

It's pretty true, I think - if you didn't know the name of this painting was "The Fall of Icarus," you'd probably think it was "Seaside Farmer" or "The Staircase to the Port." But way in the background, nearly imperceptible, Icarus' legs and a few stray feathers stick up out of the water like a last sigh before plunging in.

If you can, also check out Auden reading the poem himself - he's not as well known a reader of his own work as Dylan Thomas. How famous, you ask? How about Thomas getting name-checked by Ethan Hawke in "Before Sunrise" reading Auden's "As I Walked Out One Evening."


But Auden is more restrained and elegant instead of Thomas' theatricality and verve, a little more Derek Jacobi than Ian McKellen.


Please ignore the creepy Frankensteined animation and just listen to the man read.