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Auden, W. H.: Musée des beaux-arts (Musée des Beaux Arts in Spanish)

Portre of Auden, W. H.

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Musée des Beaux Arts (English)

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.



Uploaded byP. T.
Source of the quotationhttp://poetrypages.lemon8.nl

Musée des beaux-arts (Spanish)

Acerca del dolor jamás se equivocaron

Los Antiguos Maestros. Y qué bien entendieron

Su función en el mundo. Cómo llega

Mientras alguno cena o abre la ventana

O nada más camina sin objeto.

Cómo, mientras los viejos aguardan reverentes

El milagroso Nacimiento, habrá siempre

Niños sin mayor interés en lo que ocurre,

Patinando

En el estanque helado a la orilla del bosque.

No olvidaron jamás

Que el eterno martirio ha de seguir su curso,

Irremediablemente, en sórdidos rincones,

Donde viven los perros su perra vida

Y la yegua del verdugo se rasca

Las inocentes grupas contra un árbol.

Por ejemplo, en el Icaro de Brueghel:

Con qué serenidad

Todo parece lejos del desastre.

El labrador oyó seguramente

El rumor de las aguas y el grito inconsolable.

Pero el fracaso no lo conmovió:

Brillaba el sol como brilló en el cuerpo blanco

Al hundirse en las aguas verdes.

Y la elegante y delicada nave

Debió haber visto lo inaudito:

La caída de un niño que volaba.

Pero el barco tenía un destino

Y siguió navegando en calma.



Uploaded byP. T.
Source of the quotationhttp://amediavoz.com

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