In Auden’s celebrated poem about Icarus drowning While the world and his wife passed by, he nicely Highlights the quotidian aspect of tragedy, it could be A mugging of a pregnant woman on Kensington High Street, A suspicious house harboring a secret of kidnap And rape, a soldier killed by a roadside bomb far away, All events equal to other events, as might be listed On a TV news bulletin, like Icarus fallen into the waves. There is that measure of acceptance because life Moves on, it actually does, on our behalf, as if One’s present action was all that was required. By divine authority, tragedy is part of life: when It is your turn, when eyes momentarily look your way, You are Icarus drowning, it is no red letter day.
