A Cloud Creates

Debussy: Nuages




A cloud creates
the face of a man
who, happening
to look up,
recognizes it
as his own.
The face under
stress of the wind
begins to disintegrate
into wings,
and the man sees
in himself
the ability to fly.
He stretches forth his arms
and raises them
up and down
as he begins to
circle and dip
as a birdman would
in the currents of the wind, and then the face vanishes and the wings drift apart too, losing their form in shreds and patches. By this, he foretells his aging, debility and eventual death; he can accept. The clouds darken, as they will. Thunder rolls from their colliding with each other. Lightning flashes. He knows he is at war with himself, the reason for which he cannot go into at this moment. The war first must be fought for and against himself, and he stands in the pouring rain that has started at the first thunderclap. Though the face he had seen has disappeared, yet it is of the clouds that it was created and of which he feels himself a part, and so the rain ceases and the sun emerges and once more the clouds arrive, white, brilliantly lit and so, for him, full of hope. He has not attempted to sort out his, as it seems, random feelings since sight of the face. There is no order to his feelings, he is certain, but he needs none, not while the sun rises and sets and weather prevails. It is from weather that he derives, and so he has no faults. He is without fault, he is of the weather.
--David Ignatow
A Cloud Creates

Willie Nelson: Nuages

GIF by Head Like An Orange : Fiordland National Park, New Zealand