CLOUDS
1
We are the progeny of unfathomable waters.
borne by summer heat.
At our birth there was great jubilation:
laughing, the sun scaled the waves,
Essential, pure and bright,
sparkled and glistened.
A far-off wind was summoned,
in impassioned spirit danced.
2
Our longing was for the atmosphere,
exulted was desire;
The clear sunbeam’s small, fine steps
we softly climbed,
Up and up we climbed, mixed and scattered
to the sphere of the sky.
The blowing wind carried a strength to shift us over
jungle, town and ridge.
3
The divine manifestation of the earth we saw
of ridge and plain,
Glen, valley, the nakedness
of Himalayan wood and spey,
The godly, snaking path of the crystal waterway,
these waterfalls of tuft and shrubbery,
Of hut and bothy, of clean harmony,
of palace, of boundary.
By Laxmi Prasad Devkota. Translated from the Nepali.
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