Our weather has been very, very changeable, alternating between showers, heavier rain, strong winds, and bursts of sun. Over several days the clouds were just unbelievably surreal. These made me recall my favorite French poet Charles Baudelaire's poem L’étranger (The Stranger), which reads as follows:Qui aimes-tu le mieux, homme énigmatique, dis? Ton père, ta mère, ta soeur ou ton frère?
- Je n'ai ni père, ni mère, ni soeur, ni frère.
- Tes amis?
-Vous vous servez là d'une parole dont le sens m'est resté jusqu'à ce jour inconnu.
- Ta patrie?
- J'ignore sous quelle latitude elle est située.
- La beauté?- Je l'aimerais volontiers, déesse et immortelle.
- L'or?- Je le hais comme vous haïssez Dieu.
- Eh! qu'aimes-tu donc, extraordinaire étranger?
- J'aime les nuages... les nuages qui passent... là-bas... là-bas... les merveilleux nuages!
The Stranger
Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best? Your father,Your mother, your sister, or your brother?
-I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.
Your friends?
-Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.
Your country?
-I do not know in what latitude it lies.
Beauty?
-I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.
Gold?
-I hate it as you hate God.
Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
-I love the clouds... the clouds that pass... up there...up there... the wonderful clouds!
See other skies at SKYWATCH.
