तरीहि बकरी पाला खाते;...Still the Dogs Go On With Their Doggy Life: W. H. Auden@114

Today February 21 2021 is 114th birth anniversary of W. H. Auden
 
"...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...." 

('Musée des Beaux Arts', December 1938)

John Sutherland writes of the poem:

“...‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ is not, in itself, a difficult poem but it is baffling if one does not know where it is coming from. Auden was a much travelled poet. In 1938 he spent several months in Belgium. They were ominous months: war was looming.

The ‘Musee’ in the poem is the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, in Brussels. It has a magnificent collection of the 16th-century artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s paintings. We should picture the poet sauntering, on a quiet summer afternoon, through the galleries, savouring Bruegel’s masterpieces. The poem has no rhyme scheme – it’s a stream of unstructured consciousness.

The first painting the poet sees is that of Herod’s census – the sinister search for the unborn Jesus narrated in the Gospel of Luke. Mary and Joseph flee to Bethlehem. In the gospels ‘the miraculous birth’ is an all-important event. But in the painting it is no big thing. Not as important, for example, as unloading a cart is to the carter, or skating is to children on their ‘pond at the edge of the wood’. A baby is born in a barn? So what. It happens every day in Bethlehem. The census-taking is going on at an improvised office window. The painting is all detail, as is everyday life...”

Has this poem influenced B S Mardhekar's (बा सी मर्ढेकर) following poem?

"अजून येतो वास फुलांना

अजून माती लाल चमकते;

खुरट्या बुंध्यावरी चढून 

अजून बकरी पाला खाते.

... 

भूकंपाचा इकडे  धक्का 

पलीकडे अन्  युद्ध-नगारे;

चहूंकडे अन् एकच गिल्ला,

जुन्या शवांवर नवे निखारे.

 ...

तरीहि येतो वास फुलांना,
तरीहि माती लाल चमकते;
खुरट्या बुंध्यावरी चढून
तरीहि बकरी पाला खाते;

..."

'The Census at Bethlehem', 1566

Artist: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569)

courtesy: Wikimedia Commons