Carry On Poem by gershon hepner

Breughel said we have to carry on,
whatever may be happening outside,
and pay far less attention to each con,
than to the pros that have to be our guide.
Though dreadful martyrdoms are now a threat
to life as we have known it in the west,
the worst is yet to come, for sure, but yet
in circumstances such as these it’s best
on frozen ponds in dark woods still to skate
to make sure that our lives are vigorous,
and not be too distracted by the fate
of omens falling from the sky like Icarus.


Inspired by “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.

7/8/05