詩人正在觀賞由文藝復興時期的大師繪畫關於耶穌誕生和殉道的畫作。字裏行間，不難發現詩人認同大師的看法：世間苦難是必然，人類是何其渺小，就算上帝要化成肉身拯救人類世界，祂自己也沒有例外，也要面對苦難，所以人類也該要明白自己作為人類的位置，苦難是不能避免。畫作當中呈現的是，就算耶穌將要來到人間，每個人對這個奇蹟的誕生抱著截然不同的態度；代表著智慧的老人家熱熾盼待耶穌的誕生，有些人仍在做著日常平凡生活的事情，代表著無知的小朋友也是在嬉戲玩樂，沒有為此特別高興雀躍。面對耶穌的受難死亡，他們更清楚這苦難其實在世界某角落必然發生，動物也仍在繼續他們被奴役的生活。

其中一幅的代表作是 Breughel的Icarus。Icarus在希臘神話象徵野心和不自量力，最終自討苦吃。人類和動物彷彿深明Icarus失敗受苦的原因，對他的苦難置若罔聞，繼續他們現在和明天的生活。

---

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 martydom 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.