April 4, 2021: Trouble Returning to Camp

               Trouble Returning to Camp

 

The rocks have changed

From orange to brown to gray.

I’m still unable to find my way.

It’s as though somehow they’ve re-arranged.

No matter how I’ve looked and looked,

I can’t find the place where I crossed the brook.

 

And the hills – not so far,

Changed from yellow and green to sultry black.

It’s useless anymore to try to go back.

The sky is opening, star by star.

I look for my flashlight in the base of my pack.

It has so many pockets.  Hard to keep track.

 

I’ll build me a fire.

Dry wood is abundant and I find it in piles.

But also, so are the reptiles!

Seeking my comfort is my present desire.

I haven't the heart to hike -- how many miles?

My friends will be worried.  I'll bring them a smile.

 

All I have is right here:

Here, in this clearing, where the stream takes a bend.

I am alone with my instincts, on which I depend.

I have little to fear:

No cause to explain what I didn't intend:

I may be lost, but this isn’t the end.

April 4, 2021: Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden in The United States in Lit., page 545

 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.