#they MUST have seen something AMAZING but they sailed calmly on!!!!!!

[kuwdora]

WIP Sunday Snippet... from the vilgefortz wankery. This snippet remains in my discard pile because how many paintings is too many to be referencing in this fic? I think I'm up to 5 or 6 at this point. I might put it back in though...we'll see. Soooo... Geralt and Vilgefortz are in a wing of the gallery that features some of the more critical artwork.

Sunday Afternoon on The River of Alabaster Bridges depicted a rotting corpse of a dragon floating belly up in the middle of the Pontar. Peasants in the foreground went about their harvesting, scythes in their hands while a small child played naked in the shallows. A small rowboat with two lovers were mid-river, hands joined in a moment of quiet intimacy and indifferent to the decay beside them. The brushstrokes of the water were inelegant, and the usual gleaming color of the river was polluted by the fetid body. The human figures were painted in a dull grey in contrast of the dragon whose golden scales were melting off its body in the heat of the sun. A mage in a deep red cloak stood at the corner of the painting, holding a magnifying glass up to a melted scale he had fished out of the water.

It was the work of Hugo Bluewythe, the only gnomish artist whose work was featured at Aretuza. Born to a Mahakham family, he was a successful metallurgist, had local fame and a family who was proud to call him one of their own. After several decades of monotony, he grew tired of embellishing weapons that he knew would be used to kill. So he picked up a paintbrush instead. His customers and family were unhappy with this change in vocation because he dared to express his vision by other means. But he didn’t allow their criticisms to get in his way and he became quite renowned for his work depicting humanity’s indifference to non-human suffering.

Vilgefortz watched Geralt frown at the painting.

Anyway, this is 100% a riff on Pieter Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and Auden's poem about the painting.

Musée des Beaux Arts By W. H. Auden

December 1938 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.

#vilgywank #my witcher wips #there is actual fucking in this fic #there's also just a lot of art history and political and moral philosophy too. okay. TWN did not have enough of that. #vilgefortz of roggeveen #geralt x vilgefortz

[homomenhommes]

“…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.” Musée des Beaux Arts, W.H. Auden

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus • Pieter Bruegel the Elder •

[amrv-5]

5, 12, 14 for ask post :))))

HELLO LIVV!!! I’m DONE WITH WORK sorry for the late answer!!! These were fun!!!! And also. my god retrospective apology for the length of this I got really excited about my Symbolic Worldview Statement About Windchimes In Somewhere to Get To / Sailed Calmly On for a . lot of paragraphs.

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!

AH well!!!!! Exciting. I’m about to sound so insane for paragraphs and paragraphs. I’ve got metaphors and symbolic imagery operating in very silly places. Here goes:

What’s up with Daniel’s windchimes in Somewhere to Get To and Sailed Calmly On?

And the answer: As with so much in this little fic verse, it comes back indirectly to [loud buzzer noise indicating incoming Parker Being Annoying About A Poem He Loves content] dear old Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts.” Sorry to anybody who has heard me be soooo annoying about this poem in relation to these fics in the past. At least it’s a new angle on it (after a restatement of the Poem’s Relation To Blah Blah Etc. So Sorry Hurrying Through It Now). 

Anyway, the poem focuses partially on Breughel’s painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” (see it, and the poem, reproduced at the prior link). As per its title, the painting represents the fall of Icarus, but embedded in a landscape. Icarus is a minute little ocean-splash in the lower right corner of the canvas, a pale pair of legs about to be dragged under the water. Looking at the canvas from a distance, it’s hard to notice him at all. The focus is more on the foreground, where ploughmen go about their work, and on the lovely ship moving through the water. Like us on first viewing, none of the figures in the painting notice, or at least care to act, on the fact Icarus is drowning. This enormous, mythic moment is reduced to a petty background splash—lasting an instant, and then fading away, nobody paying it much mind. 

That’s the topic of Auden’s poem (swear to God we’re getting to the windchimes), which (in excerpt) notes: 

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; 

(…) 

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.

So that’s the painting, and the poem, which both deal with the sort of tragicomic mundanity of suffering. Somewhere to Get To and Sailed Calmly On are clearly ripped, title-wise, from the last line of the Auden, and that’s because it was a theme I was playing with very consciously through each—there are a lot of characters drowning, in their own ways, and the world spins on. 

OKAY sorry for restating all of that if it’s been read or said before.

In re: the wind chimes: to me, they’re meant to stand—I don’t want to say in opposition to, because both images stem from the same sort of philosophy—but as a partial response to the Icarus-Drowns-Unnoticed theme at play in the fics. Windchimes force a person to acknowledge the existence of the unseen. To me they’re like… symbolic of being a sentinel of joy or care. Happiness (your own) or suffering (of others) is very easy to let slip by unnoticed or at least not consciously registered or responded to (gentle breeze one does not make intentional note of). Treating happiness / joy as a practice instead of a transient, at-random feeling, and being intentional in wanting to perceive others/the world as it stands, helps (I think) Icarus (us, in despair) swim a little stronger, and helps (us, preoccupied) notice drowning strangers when they need it. All of this, translated to fic-verse and imagery, is the ridiculous number of windchimes around the Pierce household, tracking every unseen, unfelt shift of air in a way that is impossible to ignore. They’re doctors, and they’re also, as we learn (to my characterization) people who work actively against an innate despair with the conscious, repeated choice to care, and care widely, and actively look for joy. 

And, then, why Hawkeye finds himself so devastated after the war, and so doubly hurt by his inability to get help: all of that attentiveness to the world, other’s pain, active search for joy against an interior tendency towards the water, has been burnt through by witnessing mass-scale violence he was largely powerless to stop. He’s distressed because he’s put so much of himself into the world, at an unsustainable pace, and nearly none of it comes back to him. Or at least not right away. He brushes a windchime when he comes home, listens to it sound, and then does the same with the same windchime in reverse as he leaves the house and flees to the city. And then, by the end of S2G2, a neighbor’s windchime sounds as BJ brings him a clementine and enjoys a warm day, and as Hawk wakes up to look out into the morning fog. Healing, hope, joy and rejection of despair, caring for one another with intentionality, etc. Sorry if this is sooooo silly but I love the windchimes and I'm so glad I got to talk about them LMAO <3

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

Ouuughhhhh. Hmm. Barring a few specific exceptions, I’m usually down to read just about anything trope-wise; usually it’s more a question of Author Trust or Is It Well-Written In My Opinion, etc. I’d say, though, there are certain Tropes / Themes / Fic Concepts that are hard Nopes for me in most contexts but are for Hawkeye totally fine because, well, he’s a bit of a special bird. 

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?

Major character death. ESPECIALLY in MASH, if we’re not talking a character who’s already… etc. I can think of 2-4 authors who I would MAYBE. MAYBE read a major character death from. Breaks my heart tooooooo much <3

THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTIONS and I’m sorry about the. length. LMAO got excited about my windchimes

#my fucking god #so sorry livv again the. length of this but THANK YOU i had so much fun #anyway #meta #I guess? #deep read of the. s2g2 windchimes. for anyone interested in my marginal symbolic insanity #ask game

[poems-from-around-the-world]

Musée des Beaux Arts - W.H. Auden - UK

December 1938

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.

#musée des beaux arts #W.H. Auden #UK #poem #poetry #poems from around the world

[insilverrolled]

Musée des Beaux Arts

By 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.

#w h auden #art #suffering

[quotent-potables]

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.

— "Musée des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden.

Read the full poem and see the painting it references here

#quotes #poetry #musée des beaux arts #w. h. auden #icarus

[goliadkine]

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.

#poetry #w.h auden

[dnickels]

Musée des Beaux Arts

WH 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 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

[versey21]

16th August

Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H.Auden

This poem by Auden is an example of ‘ekphrasis’, a Greek term for when a visual work of art (in this case Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Bruegel) is described by a textual work of art (in this case Auden’s poem). He is fascinated that in this painting a boy can fall out of the sky and into the ocean and yet life continues on all around the tragedy, as if nothing has happened. Excerpts from the poem follow below.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1560)

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

It’s human position;

…

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; ploughmen 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 expansive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Icarus, wearing wings fashioned by his father, the craftsman Daedalus, flew too close to the sun which melted the wax straps attaching his wings and he fell to his death in the ancient Greek parable of overweaning ambition. Auden finds Bruegel’s stylisation of the episode of great interest, particularly the detail of the landscape characters and their absorption in their daily lives. The painting still resides in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, although it is now viewed as an early and skilled copy, not the original.

#poetry #wh auden #icarus poem #ambition

[katharine-hepburn]

Musee 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.

makes my cry every time

[poemsfortheweary]

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

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.

- “Musée des Beaux Arts” (1940) by W.H. Auden

#poetry #Auden

[staywildeveryday]

Musee des Beaux Arts

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. ~ W. H. Auden

#poetry #it keeps hitting #i'll probably end up memorising this #as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water #what a line #w. h. auden

[nothingbutmortimer]

Musée des Beaux Arts

By W. H. Auden

December 1938

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.

***

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

William Carlos Williams

1883 –1963

According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring

a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry

of the year was awake tingling near

the edge of the sea concerned with itself

sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax

unsignificantly off the coast there was

a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning

[amrv-5]

sorry this is out of curiousity and you totally can not answer it but what is the long fic you’re writing about

ahh hello!! no problem I’m happy to answer (i love.... talking about writing....i will ALWAYS love talking about writing. it fills me with absolute joy to talk at length about themes ideas motifs etc in my writing. even if they’re just ‘what in god’s name were you thinking’ i will ALWAYS love questions!!)! 

in general terms, the as-yet untitled Long Fic is just another post-war fic about Hawk and Beej trying to adjust back to life in the States on their own, and eventually finding their way back to each other again. extremely down-the-line, absolutely no supernatural twists, high realism. It’s only stupid long because I’m trying to give that the space it needs to feel real to me, and that amount of space is turning out to be: A Lot.

a broader series of themes & questions (so far lol) are below the cut for mild thematic spoilers, length, and (sorry) minimizing exposure to pretentiousness purposes:

So You Want to Know What the Long Fic is About: A Condensed Thematic Overview of 158K (For Now) of Straight-Up Realist Historical Fiction Where, No Joke, a Significant Portion of That Length is Dedicated Solely to Guys Thinkin’ Real Hard About Stuff, Guaranteed to Make You Say ‘Holy Fuck, I’m Sorry I Asked, Please Just Shut Up’ With Parker, Your Resident Guy Who is Normal About TV

1. Mis- and non-communication.

What happens when you go from sleeping three feet away from your best friend in the world to living so far away a letter takes two weeks on a round trip? How do your methods of understanding each other (and misunderstanding each other…) change? How does or can one maintain closeness when literal proximity is denied? How does somebody handle abandonment when the abandonment in question was unavoidable (i.e. nobody to blame--the death of a mother, maybe, or the end of a shared living situation)?

2. Justice, suffering, and recompense.

This is where the pretentiousness comes in, I know this makes me sound like an asshole I just care about American case law a lot and it infects all of my writing, etc. etc. Anyway. How do we approach ideas of suffering and justice when they fall outside the jurisdiction of an American view of legal culpability? How does one go about trying to seek justice when they are provably, demonstrably hurt, but there is nowhere to direct the blame? These questions are kind of slippery and weird, so I’ll try to frame it more directly: somebody in this story is going to struggle (as they always do in my work) with despair. It is a serious and life-long struggle. How does a person in that situation move beyond ideas like fairness, justice, and being owed relief, to accepting that ‘fairness’ doesn’t really exist in terms of things like personal neurochemistry? And how, then, does that acceptance hold itself in relation to larger forms of human injustice--how does somebody accept their own ‘unfair’ situation as a reality they must bear while continuing to maintain ideological opposition to injustices that can be changed?

3. Empathy and invisible strife.

A little bit of an overlap with the previous set of ideas, but this one flows out of one of my favorite poems in the world, “Musee des Beaux Arts” by Auden (check it out, if you haven’t read it!). The narrator states:

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;

And then, later: 

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.

I am compelled by how frequently awareness of strife is set aside in day to day life, especially in American life, and that comes through big time in the Long Fic. 

At a psychological level, there’s a certain idea, I think, that it is very evident when people are doing badly; that you will always be able to tell; that the solution is as simple as reaching out, or asking for help. Unfortunately, that is often not the case. Somebody can be having the worst day of their life, be absolutely at the end of their rope, be seconds away from losing it completely, and five feet to the left there could be somebody else making a ham sandwich. So that comes through a lot in the work--this borderline absurdist, tragicomic idea that nobody’s ever really going to know exactly how you feel, and even if they did, they might be too busy doing the crossword to notice.

And at a less granular level, you can apply this (and will see it applied) to the American cultural response to the Korean War, which was incredibly muted. Even though millions of people died, even though the daily suffering of people, especially local civilians, involved was immense, because it was so (to an American domestic point of view) far-off, most people just went on with their lives. People celebrated birthdays, TV shows were produced, city council meetings dragged gaily on.

These things seem inevitable, and the ideas behind them kind of obvious: of course the world keeps turning when bad things happen. People just aren’t built to maintain ceaseless fear, anger, outrage, etc. at tragedy that is not directly affecting them, because they are concerned with the business of being alive. The people that do manage to maintain constant attention to large-scale but abstract or not immediately visible tragedies tend to go crazy, self-immolate, and/or quit their fancy math professorships at Berkeley in order to start direct mail marketing campaigns. Everybody else tends to feel bad about an issue, maybe they’ll see if they can do something small to help, and then they forget about it and keep managing the minutiae of their own lives. Yes, of course this or that issue is tragic--but I’ve got to do my taxes, or I’ve got to hit a deadline, or I’ve got to go to the store. The ploughman keeps working, too busy to investigate the splash. The ship sails on with somewhere to get to. 

But then again, even if the logic is sound, from Icarus’s point of view the world has got to seem awfully cold and mean.

#fuck this got long #sorry! hope that explains vaguely what to expect! #and again to clarify: I LOVE QUASTION #never apologize for talking to me about writing i am a little literature freak and i WILL write you an essay about literally anything #in conclusion: it's going to be a weird one but I hope it connects to people #but if you don't have time to read like probably 200K #(and who could blame you) #just read that auden poem and it'll say everything i'm trying to say 10000x faster and better and more beautifully #meta #the long fic #The LitFic Cometh

[seekingstars]

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.

#poetry #w.h. auden

[mordere-diem]

"... 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."

W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts

#w. h. auden #poetry #quotes #bite of the day #myths and legends #literature