When the godhead, Camarupa, noble and high,
flickers through the air, heavy and spry,
gathers the folds of the veil, only them to toss,
to enjoy the change of shapes, their loss,
now gaze upon them, firm, and, as a dream away,
astonished, do not trust the eyes, for they betray.
Now the slight move of a power its own,
develops the unknown into the known;
There a lion turns, an elephant rises up high,
camel necks, now, from that, a dragon afly;
an army comes near but does not prevail,
cut along the crags, blown by a gale;
the truest cloud signal soon dissipates,
before it reaches the depths of what man elates.
He, though, Howard, gives with a sense unabjured,
the most august gain, ready to be lectured;
what cannot be held, cannot be attained,
he grasps it, for the first, something retained;
knows the unknown, running it in,
truly names it!—Your honor to win!—
They streak and clot and blow and fall,
You are remembered thankfully by all.
Stratus
Over the water’s mirror view
a fog, a stretched canopy, fully adew,
the moon appearing, rays together,
a ghost creating ghost, another,
here we all are, here we stand now all,
alive, joyous children, o! nature’s thrall;
collected and broad, cut on the peak,
blade against blade, both astreak;
the mid-mountain, tending one together,
falling water, or into the ether.
Cumulus
If up the atmosphere we crawl,
we receive the wage we call,
there are clouds august, high, combined,
declared and built, power in mind,
and what you all fear is still to come,
to what above turns, below will succumb.
Cirrus
And yet higher above, a noble thrust!
salvation urges the sky, heavens just.
heaped as one, fluff all strewn,
a shearling, lightly hewn.
Fly finally along to your place,
under the protection of the Father, his hand and face.
Nimbus
We turn down, gravity-led
towards that which is brought to a head,
pronouncing itself as a storm, so clear,
armies clash and disappear!—
The destinal truth of the Earth!
But the image is filled with worth!
Speech dissipates when it portrays:
but the psyche mounts, and there it stays.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a Prussian polymath of the 18th and 19th centuries famed for his contributions to both art and science. He is most well-known for his literary contributions, such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and Faust, though he also successfully proved that the premaxillary bone was expressed in all mammalian species and pioneered meteorology. “Ode to Howard” is a synthesis of these two poles of his work, drawing on the work of Luke Howard (who provided the first classification of clouds) to poetically describe various cloudforms.
James M. Kopf is a scholar and translator working at the intersections of environmental philosophy, Romanticism, media theory, and phenomenology. James is currently based at the Humanities Center of Texas Tech University, which he would like to thank; without its support, this work would not be possible. His first book is Phenomenology, Soundscape, Music: A Fragmentary System of Resonance and Echo (De Gruyter, 2025), which Avital Ronell has called “a crucial integration of music in our lives and the history of thought” that “exceeds the scope of the important tradition of cultural and philosophical inquiries of our time.”
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Heavy Feather Review 