The Sheltering Sky by Ryuichi Sakamoto

The

Cloud Asylum

"To be sad, it is necessary to feel." 

                 ~Clarice Lispector

i

The clouds were different then,

with no two skies the same.

At 18 years of age he fled the states
for a fictive reverie of Switzerland

only to abandon his Smith Corona

in a 4th floor Zurich motel room.

Setting out to wander 
the damp streets,

his mind under  
a clotted cloud,
he had become a foreigner

 to everyone and everything,
unwilling to face 
the non-fiction
of ordinary days.

He'd shorn his hair
as well as

any hope of belonging.

His body, the clumsy marionette

of a love-sick heart
barely tread the solid ground.
It was here, beneath 
a canopy of cumulus clouds,

that he fell in love 
with sorrow.

In his pilgrimage through the city

he purchased a music box

with a bust of Chopin atop the base

for no other reason than

it’s delicate tune rhymed with his feelings.

How long could he wander the world

like some soul-sick star

making the locals uneasy.

What had he hoped to find 
in so foreign a place?

Had he thought the high altitude 

was enough to heal his heart?

Unaware he would live 
the rest of his life

 by the skin of his teeth,

the shock treatments having injured

the synapses in his brain
leaving his thinking fractured,

a head perpetually in the clouds.

forever lost  
inside the sky of himself.

ii

He was old now,
as old as the many grown up men
who'd been unable to show him
how to live with too much feeling.
Only now does he know
what a man could be.
He'd managed to hold 
on to a lofty beauty
within himself
that would never desert him,

nor would his forgetfulness
of neighbors names;

his pleasantness concealing
it's harrowed history.

He cleaned apartments in New York

and assisted seniors in a spectrum

of much needed services.

He screened classic films 

in his building's community room.

Riding the elevator was a chance
for shared appreciations
for what he gave
and received

in his small community.

He had a cat he stroked

while he wrote poetry.

He was grateful he had a roof 
over his head,
a shelter

from

his secret history

with clouds.

Peter Valentyne

June 5th, 2019