fall of icarus

i'm sure we're all pretty familiar with the story of icarus, but i wonder how many people have read wh auden's poem "musee des beaux arts"? i guess this is a multi-point post. 1. i have a strange attraction to the story of icarus. the moral reverberations, perhaps. i don't take many risks, and maybe i am fearful of melting my wings and crashing into the sea. 2. i love auden, especially since i recently found out about his friendship with tolkein. 3. i've been disturbed recently by the news, and my ability to not be moved by it anymore. its simply not right that i can watch news hour, see how many american soldiers died and just keep hopping on.
this poem ties these considerations together. auden looked at breughel's painting and saw suffering that wasn't being addressed. icarus was dying! i'm guilty of such complacency, and it frustrates me. more to come on this later. its too late for me to be up typing this. but anyway, auden's poem:

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.