Poem: Soft Tone and Moving Clouds (Qing Yin Liu Yun)

Imagine sitting in a grass meadow and visualizing the panoramic view of the sky. If the sky were a highway, then the clouds would-be travelers. Moving slowly and stealthily from one end of the horizon to the other, with the wind as the propelling force, the clouds sail across the sky much like how yachts sail across the limitless blue seas.

They become messengers to lovers and observers of worldly events; they emote with thunder, lightning, and rain, they are harbingers of hope for thirsty earthlings below.

With such profundity and meaning, our spongy friends floating over our heads attract the human mind and music. The soft tone of Guqin flows through the breeze slowly resonating with the moods and status of the cloud — hopeful, liberated, carefree, responsible, nurturing, pregnant, angry, dark, belligerent, gloomy — the list can go on. But we will consider that the clouds like music cover the entire spectrum of human emotions and moods.

Listen to the Guqin music — Soft Tone and Moving Clouds, while you read the poem of the same title.

Poem: Soft Tone and Moving Clouds

Moving clouds —
Travelers on an azure highway
From a journey from nowhere
To a destination unknown

Moving clouds —
Aimless wanderers
Neither seek nor search
Going with the flow

Moving clouds –
Nomads who don’t stay
Traveling night and day
Like life, they go on and forward.

Moving clouds —
Mobile mythical heavens
Soft Earth for the Divine
Yet mortal and transient

Moving clouds –
Trustworthy messengers
Carrying a message of love
Assuaging the lovelorn hearts

Moving clouds –
The harbingers of hope
Beacons of bounty
Awaits the parched earth

Moving clouds –
That thunderous anger
Furious lightnings
Tearful downpours from above

Moving clouds —
Companions in silence
Savoring the soft tones
Listening to mellifluous Guqin.

Moving clouds —
Spongy as our minds
Hope, sorrow, and kindness
Moving miracles like music.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2024