Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinean poet who wrote the best Spanish in the past century, wrote about clouds:

‘There is nothing that couldn’t be a cloud.
Clouds are our cathedrals
in their massive stone and coloured glasses,
driven to nothingness by the relentless time.
Cloud is the Odyssey,
which changes like the sea every time we open it.
The reflection of your face is just another,
and each day is a labyrinth of doubts.
We’re those on our way.
The heavy cloud that dissolves in the West
is ourselves.
The rose keeps on becoming the next rose.
You’re a cloud, you’re the sea, you’re oblivion.
You’re just as well all that you have not been.

Everything is a cloud. Because everything changes. Change is charm, is growth, is life. Even cathedrals in their carved stone and stained glass change in their stillness as the light filters through their coloured windows. The Odyssey changes every time we read it because our eyes and our mind have also changed in the interval; the sea changes, the mirror changes, the day changes. Change brings novelty, surprise, and joy. Change is life.

Poets agree. Pessoa told us: ‘Living is being another.’ Borges agrees: ‘the rose keeps on becoming the next rose.’ Notice the verb: ‘keeps on.’ The process goes on for ever and it is in that permanent conversion that the source of our energy is found. Petals open up, fragrances waft, colours appear. With all the courage and the strength of the new adventures, as the day is ‘a labyrinth of doubts’. It is in this new daily flowering that we find the strength, the charm, the breathing that life is.

‘We’re those on our way.’ Not in the dismal sense of the funeral dirge but in the renewed courage of the eternal farewell, since we have to take leave of each instant if we are to welcome the next one. This ‘being on our way’ is life’s wisdom from road to road and from fullness to fullness. Knowing how to take leave is the painful condition for meeting again. And every meeting is a new birth because our face has also changed as the mirror testifies. Everything is in those verses. Everything is in the cloud. We see the cloud daily though we do not pay attention to its messages in its ever changing shape. The beauty of the cloud is in its impermanence. Beauty is rare. Being a cloud is also a rare achievement.

The verses teach us at the end that changing we lose nothing. ‘You’re just as well all that you have not been.’ Nothing is forgotten in the cloud’s weightless biography. Enough to live each day in its simplicity. ‘You’re a cloud, you’re the sea, you’re oblivion.’ I am all that I have been and I will ever be. On condition I let myself be at each moment whatever I am. As a cloud. Which is the title of the poem: Clouds. Heavenly inspiration.