Poetry in Motion

New York

A Big Clown-Face-Shaped Cloud

Kenneth Koch
A white horizontal poster with a colorful mosaic at the top features a poem titled A Big Clown-Face-Shaped Cloud, by Kenneth Koch.

A Big Clown-Face-Shaped Cloud

You just went by
With no one to see you, practically.
You were in good shape, for a cloud,
With perhaps several minutes more to exist
You were speaking, or seemed to be,
Mouth open wide, talking to a 
Belted angel-shaped cloud
             that was riding ahead.



From Possible World by Kenneth Koch. Copyright © 2002 by Kenneth Koch. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, a Division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission of the Kenneth Koch Literary Estate.