ABOUT SUFFERING

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;[1]


Auden, whilst giving credit to Breughel, as he so often does, gets it right, he hits the spot. The mother mourns her dead child as the undertaker stifles a yawn and across the street an ice cream van pulls up. You leave the hospital with terminal news and the cab driver opens the door chewing gum, it is the indifference of the world that frames our suffering.

‘Don’t they know it’s the end of the world’

Skeeter Davis intoned over the radio when I was young and of course they did not or if they did they had things to be getting on with tasks to perform. And this is how we experience the suffering of others too, we walk, already ten minutes late for work, the blood spattered body of the motorcyclist lies in the roadway, we take in the crowd surrounding the man, noting the inappropriate clothing of the car driver clumsily attempting to comfort him, she had come unprepared for this role and we move on. Suffering like life something that happens when your busy making other plans.






[1] Musee des Beaux Arts W.H. Auden

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