Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Brueghel by W. H. Auden


Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Pieter Brueghel c. 1558
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Bruxelas

Musée des Beaux Arts

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 plowman 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.

1 comment:

niño said...

Finalmente algo menos digital.

E já agora o que é isso dos Pontos de Sela? Será Equitação? :)

Combina uma data qualquer com a
Teresinha para podermos pôr esse computador mais funcional.

Um Beijinho e BOA ESCRITA.