Brad Davis Seal

With words, a poem can give a richer image of an experience than a photography can show.

The clouds are bound to the earth and the wind.
As long as they gather high over Turin,
life will be good. I lift up my head
and watch the great game unfold in the sun.
Rock-hard white masses surrounded up there
by blue wind—at times it undoes them
and reshapes them into vast light-soaked sails.
Over the roofs, clouds by the thousands
cover all things: the crowds, the stones, the uproar.
Often I’ve risen and looked down to find
clouds gleaming in the basin’s clear water.
Trees too bring together the sky and the earth.
And immense cities resemble the forests—
from down in the streets, we get glimpses of sky.
Like the vital trees on the banks of the Po,
heaps of houses live in torrents of sunlight.
Trees too suffer and die beneath clouds;
man bleeds, and he dies—but he sings his joy
between the earth and the sky, sings the great marvel
of cities and forests. Tomorrow there’s time
to crawl into my shell, gritting my teeth. For now life’s made
of clouds and of plants and of streets, all lost in the sky.

Song, Cesare Pavese