Auden focused his poem in the Icarus's fall from the sky after his wings melted. W. H. Auden was observed the paint named The scene with the Icarus's fall at Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles.
In that painting is observed a plowman working, a shepherd with his sheep, some ships and in the lower right corner, a pair of white legs moving inside the lake. Everyone seems to keep into their activities and maybe they didn't notice what happened with the man inside the lake. Auden took that scene as inspiration for writing about the humanity's indifference at the suffering