Стихи и эссе

     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.

1938

from In Time of War