Showing posts with label Joseph Rudyard Kipling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joseph Rudyard Kipling. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Cuando Vayan Mal Las Cosas


Cuando vayan mal las cosas
como a veces suelen ir,
cuando ofrezca tu camino
sólo cuestas que subir,

Cuando tengas mucho haber
pero mucho que pagar,
y precises sonreír
aun teniendo que llorar,

Cuando ya el dolor te agobie
y no puedas ya sufrir,
descansar acaso debes
pero nunca desistir.

Tras las sombras de la duda,
ya plateadas ya sombrías,
puede bien surgir el triunfo,
no el fracaso que temías,

y no es dable a tu ignorancia
figurarse cuan cercano, puede estar
el bien que anhelas y que juzgas tan lejano,
lucha, pues por más que en la brega tengas que sufrir.
¡Cuando todo esté peor, más debemos insistir!

Si en la lucha el destino te derriba,
si todo en tu camino es cuesta arriba,
si tu sonrisa es ansia satisfecha,
si hay faena excesiva y vil cosecha,
si a tu caudal se contraponen diques,
Date una tregua, ¡pero no claudiques!

Joseph Rudyard Kipling
30 Dec 1865 - 18 Jan 1936

Friday, March 09, 2007

The Secret of the Machines (Modern Machinery)


We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,
We were melted in the furnace and the pit—
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,
And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:
And now if you will set us to our task,
We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!

We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,
We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,
We can run and jump and swim and fly and dive,
We can see and hear and count and read and write!

Would you call a friend from half across the world?
If you’ll let us have his name and town and state,
You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled
Across the arch of heaven while you wait.
Has he answered? Does he need you at his side?
You can start this very evening if you choose,
And take the Western Ocean in the stride
Of seventy thousand horses and some screws!

The boat-express is waiting your command!
You will find the Mauretania at the quay,
Till her captain turns the lever ‘neath his hand,
And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.

Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head
And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?
Do you want to turn a river in its bed,
Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?
Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down
From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,
To work the mills and tramways in your town,
And irrigate your orchards as it flows?

It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!
Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake
As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,
And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!

Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because, for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!

Joseph Rudyard Kipling
30 Dec 1865 - 18 Jan 1936

El próximo mes me nivelo (Julio Ramón Ribeyro, 1969)

El próximo mes me nivelo El próximo mes me nivelo (no se publicó como un libro individual,  fue publicado en 1972  como parte del  segundo t...