Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT March 25th 2024

7 Comments

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H Auden , posted below.

Our prompt was: “When there is pain …”

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Please join us for our next session Friday April 12th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Musée des Beaux Arts by W.H Auden

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 Brueghel'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.

W. H. Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts" from Selected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson. Copyright © 1979 by W. H. Auden.  Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. (US).
Source: Selected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (Vintage Books, 1979)

7 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT March 25th 2024”

  1. michele348

    When there is pain…

    my heart shrivels as if it has eaten of a forbidden fruit.

    The pain grabs me by the throat in a strangle hold.

    It cuts off my breath and I gasp,

    waiting and hoping for my next breath.

    It is a vice pressing down on my mind,

    locking out all that is joy.

    The sweet, harmonious song of the wood thrush

    has changed into a discordant, jagged noise that offends the ear.

    I live in the prison created by this hated tyrant.

    It dictates each moment of my life

    when I am in its presence… having control of my mind, my heart, my body.

    I am its captive.

    When in due time, it decides to remove its physical presence,

    it slyly hides within my mind,

    causing me to wonder and wait in fear for its return.

    My Lord, my God… do not forsake me in my hour of need,

    for I know You watch over me.

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    Reply
    • Renée K. Nicholson

      Thanks for this writing, Michelle, which captures the moment of being in pain, often set against those that are not, brining our awareness closer because of the opposition. I felt this acutely when you wrote about the sweet song of the wood thrush turning to something jagged and discordant. You bring us into one moment to better understand the other. I also appreciated how pain can be a tyrant but also, because there are moments the pain recedes, there is also the fear of return–aptly described as sly. The linguistic wrestling mirrors the action of pain.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  2. reneekristine

    Here’s is what I wrote to this text/prompt:

    I never saw Vermeer’s women until

    I became bloodless. Paused, gone from red

    always hot and cold, pulled through a fog

    that settled in the night, vision

    changed. The woman in blue cast next to a map,

    her face blurred, less distinguishable from those young

    women staving off suitors, or lovers, or unwanted advances,

    their wine goblets to crimson mouths. Blue

    is murmuring, reading almost aloud, unaware

    of anyone, of me, in such a way

    that she’s the only one who sees

    me because I am now her.

    Like

    Reply
    • michele348

      “she’s the only one who sees me because I am now her” … that final phrase was very powerful and grabbed my attention. Thanks for posting your response to prompt.

      Like

      Reply
  3. rehavia6

    With pain comes

    Sorrow and 

    Suffering

    The afflicted has a heightened awareness of 

    the anguish of others

    Hurt leads to an

    Appreciation 

            Of

    The good times

    Like

    Reply
    • michele348

      When suffering in pain, we long for the pain to be wiped away, not wrapped around us. But often when we are pain-free, we do not consciously value the calmness, the freedom that we have… not knowing the importance of something in our possession until it’s gone. Many times, this applies to other facets of our lives.

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