Clouds Through My Poetic Eyes

White, and gray clouds,

Row upon row of clouds,

Clustered heaps of clouds,

Smoky trails of clouds,

Massive towers of clouds,

Scattered wisps of clouds.

From a bird’s eye view,

The sky seems filled only with clouds—only clouds?

But clouds are merely just clouds!

In the blink of an eye,

Clouds transform, taking on different forms with each passing moment!

Sometimes, they become Kalidasa’s Meghaduta,

Carrying messages of deep emotion thousands of miles away.

The Yaksha of Ramgiri’s love drifts

To the doorsteps of his beloved at Alakapuri’s castles.

Other times, the same clouds appear as

Joy Goswami’s Meghbalika,

Whispering poetic inspiration into ears,

Becoming rain with the charm of monsoon,

Writing a hundred different fairy tales!

Occasionally, they take the playful form of Rabindranath’s cheerful clouds—

Playing hide-and-seek with the sun,

Dreaming whimsically,

Racing with leaf boats through unknown forests and groves—

Where they journey, no one knows!

At times, a cloud takes on a deeply solitary form,

Much like Wordsworth’s lonely cloud wandering in the sky.

It gazes downward, unmoved,

Untouched even by ten, let alone ten thousand daffodils,

And then it drifts, lost in endless realms of dreams.

From Keats’ quiet clouds, resting in stillness,
To Shelley’s tumultuous, ever-moving form,
The sky holds their stories,
Shifting and reshaping into
A constant flux where each cloud speaks its own language of change.

My poetic heart, enchanted by the forms of clouds,

Throws a wistful glance skyward,

And says, “With all this love, you sit there immense,

Won’t you spare a cloud or two?”

I look at the sky supinely and wait for its reply.

The sky, with a sunlit smile, responds,

“In this vast emptiness, what I possess as mine

Are only these vaporous clouds

Do you want them too? You want everything? You want everyone?

O poet, can’t you be a lover without being a dacoit?”

Alas! Who else can I share my story of despair!

I have fallen in love:

With the Meghaduta or the Meghbalika!

What the sky clings to, I seek to set free—

Capturing it for myself: in my heart or my poetry!