Besides, observing the clouds
remains my favorite hobby when I travel,
my mind on the watch, trying to decipher
in their shapes an omen of
some happiness to come.

One day I saw something in these clouds
still more breathtaking.
One could make out a beautiful woman
with a pink complexion, as if
she had been painted by Renoir.
Her oval face, her generous chest, her flat stomach
and her long legs mingled
to the white of the clouds in the sky.

For a while I gazed at her completely
in awe, filled with the fear that
Suddenly she might vanish away.

But the those summer afternoon’s winds
were friend to me, and for a long while
she just hovered and floated there,
gazing at me from afar, as if she invited
me to follow her and to play with her
up there, in the clouds.

Finally my fears were sound, as bit by bit,
my sweetheart began to dilute into thin air,
her arms outstretched reaching out in despair,
her breasts soaring up to the heights
and detaching from her body,
her long legs coiling in spirals,
as if she refused that she must leave me.

Her alarmed and sad eyes solely
continued to stare at mine, growing bigger and bigger,
while a large and heavy cloud appeared
and took her away from me.

For a while I stood there, restlessly
following with my eyes her struggle against
the enfolding clouds and the raging winds
that tore her apart mercilessly
in annihilation.

It was then that I realized that I had been a witness,
through this evilish metamorphosis,
to a metaphor of our own destiny.

Because, like this beautiful lady in the clouds,
we are doomed to be born, to grow up, to fight,
to die and to disappear -forever.

Oscar Niemeyer