“In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water,And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”

“About suffering they were never wrong,The Old Masters; how well, they understoodIts human position; how it takes placeWhile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waitingFor the miraculous birth, there always must beChildren who did not specially want it to happen, skatingOn a pond at the edge of the wood:They never forgotThat even the dreadful martyrdom must run its courseAnyhow in a corner, some untidy spotWhere the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horseScratches its innocent behind on a tree.In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenWater; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”

“I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.”

“If I was strategic, I would have figured out how to get out of this place. Would have seen everything falling apart and got out while there were still ships to sail.”

“The rains stopped and the clouds were cleaved into shifting forms, slowly disappearing, slowly fading to blue sky, bright blue sky, with the sun, and the boy stood staring until everything turned white, and the owl flew carrying the boy away to join with the moon”

“I was crying a little for the boy I had wanted him to be and the boy he hadn’t turned out to be.”