“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.”—English poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973), “Musee des Beaux Arts,” in Another
Time (1940)
W.H. Auden was inspired to write these verses by a December
1938 visit to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels. Among
the “masters” he might have been struck by would have been Dutch painter
Cornelis Engebrechtsz (ca. 1461–1527), whose oil-and-wood painting The Crucifixion with Donors and Saints Peter
and Margaret hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hard to believe, but it’s been almost a year and a
half since I took this image of Cadman Plaza Park, on the border between Brooklyn Heights and downtown Brooklyn.
So much has happened since then, and opportunities for photos—particularly since
late last summer—have been fleeting. 
“What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart!
What jailer so inexorable as one's self!”—American novelist/short-story writer
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
“About
suffering they were never wrong,
“Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near
exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength
that are never used.”—Polar explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd (1888-1957), Alone
(1938)
“Every baseball season begins with hope. Winter has
passed. We have all survived, and even in the Northeast the ice is gone. Willows
show a hint of color. The spirit quickens with the promise of June roses.
Besides, on opening day, even the worst team has not yet lost a game.” —Sportswriter
Roger Kahn, Good Enough to Dream (2014)
