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,
After the dramatic climax of the ‘dreadful martyrdom’, the tone changes to conversational, with the words ‘Anyhow’, ‘doggy’ and ‘behind’, a characteristic of the poem. 
 The ‘innocent behind’ may be a reference to another of Breughel’s paintings, ‘The Slaughter of the Innocents.’  The animals are oblivious to the brutality of those in power, a reflection of human capacity to become inured to suffering of others. 

Musée des Beaux Arts