March
2007
Srebrenica
They say
That for the maximum effect
To avoid direct reference
How Auden in Musee des Beaux Arts
Talks about Icarus
In Brueghel’s painting and
How the rest of the world
Seems
To turn away as he falls to his death and
How the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry
I recall another painting
As beautiful as Brueghel’s Icarus
A corn field
A pale blue sky
And a not so modern abstract
Like the eyes that looked up at Guernica
As the sky fell
Where the dogs go on their doggy life
And the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree
And I heard a splash
As Icarus fell.
(In 1995 7,000 Muslim men were executed at Srebrenica. The UN Dutch force who were supposed to be protecting these men ignored orders and handed them over to the Serbs.)
Top Notch ol chap