For Jim Clark

The Berwickshire hills are still at night
only the sound of sheep at dawn
carries on the wind

A young man wakes to tend his flock
the mist a drink for noonday sun
round and round the cloven hooves
Jimmy knew the sound of wind

Always called the green fields home
from near and many faraway shores
a winding canvas, he did weave
Jimmy went round the wind

A shy smile donned his face in light
every circuit knew him well
dreaming of rolling hills at night
Jimmy, who rode the wind

Jimmy, Who Rode the Wind

Utanosuke Playing Go

Print 10-6, Kiseido Publishing; Tokyo, Japan

Oban print by Kunisada (signing as Toyokuni III), published by Tsutaya Kichizo in 1861. From the series Meigi Sanju-rokkasen (A Selection of Thirty-Six Famous Geisha). The haiku in the panel reads:

With the first move at go

the heat of this evening

is quite forgotten.

All in green went my love riding

by e.e. cummings (original source, 8 of 13 stanzas)

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrows sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down into the silver dawn.

In a book

As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear, he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Sea surface full of clouds (first stanza)

by Wallace Stevens

In that November off Tehuantepec,
The slopping of the sea grew still one night
And in the morning summer hued the deck

And made one think of rosy chocolate
And gilt umbrellas. Paradisal green
Gave suavity to the perplexed machine

Of ocean, which like limpid water lay.
Who, then, in that ambrosial latitude
Out of the light evolved the morning blooms,

Who, then, evolved the sea-blooms from the clouds
Diffusing balm in that Pacific calm?
C’était mon enfant, mon bijou, mon âme.

The sea-clouds whitened far below the calm
And moved, as blooms move, in the swimming green
And in its watery radiance, while the hue

Of heaven in an antique reflection rolled
Round those flotillas. And sometimes the sea
Poured brilliant iris on the glistening blue.

Go story and poem

Graphic art from Go World magazine, No. 81

Chinese legends abound of people who had chance meetings in the mountains with immortals. The legend of Wang Chih, a woodcutter, has survived the ages.

From Go World magazine, No. 69, Kiseido Pubishing

Wang Chih was a hardy young fellow who used to venture deep into the mountains to find suitable wood for his axe. One day he went farther than usual and became lost. He wandered for a while and eventually came upon two strange old men who were playing go, their board resting on a rock between them. Wang Chih was fascinated. He put down his axe and began to watch. One of the players gave him something like a date to chew on, so that he felt neither hunger nor thirst. As he continued to watch he fell into a sort of trance for what seemed like an hour or two. When he awoke, however, the two old men were no longer there. He found that his axe handle had rotted to dust and he had grown a long beard. When he got back to his native village he discovered that his family had disappeared and that no one even remembered his name.

Inspired by the legend, Ki no Tomonori, a Japanese poet and court official, returned to his home capital from a distant land circa A.D. 900 and wrote:

I've come back home/
There is no friend to play go with/
That place far away/
where an axe handle turned to dust--/
how dear to me it has become!

On Being Blue

Author: William Gass
A Nonpareil Book published in 1991 by David R. Godine, Publisher
Copyright 1976 by William Gass
First published by Godine in 1976

First paragraph excerpted by permission of the publisher

“Blue pencils, blue noses, blue movies, laws, blue legs and stockings, the language of birds, bees and flowers as sung by longshoremen, that lead-like look the skin has when affected by cold, contusion, sickness, fear; the rotten rum or gin they call blue ruin and the blue devils of its delirium; Russian cats and oysters, a withheld or imprisoned breath, the blue they say that diamonds have, deep holes in the ocean and the blazers which English athletes earn that gentlemen may wear; afflictions of the spirit—dumps, mopes, Mondays—all that’s dismal—lowdown gloomy music, Nova Scotians, cyanosis, hair rinse, bluing, bleach; the rare blue dahlia like that blue moon shrewd things happen only once in, or the call for trumps in whist (but who remembers whist or what the death of unplayed games is like?), and correspondingly the flag, Blue Peter, which is our signal for getting under way; a swift pitch, Confederate money, the shaded slopes of clouds and mountains, and so the constantly increasing absentness of Heaven (ins Blaue hinein, the Germans say), consequently the color of everything that’s empty: blue bottles, bank accounts, and compliments, for instance, or, when the sky’s turned turtle, the blue-green bleat of ocean (both the same), and, when in Hell, its neatly landscaped rows of concrete huts and gas-blue flames; social registers, examination booklets, blue bloods, balls, and bonnets, beards, coats, collars, chips, and cheese. . . the pedantic, indecent and censorious. . . watered twilight, sour sea: through a scrambling of accidents, blue has become their color, just as it’s stood for fidelity. Blue laws took their hue from the paper they were printed on. Blue noses were named for a potato. E. Haldeman-Julius’ little library, where I first read Ellen Key’s Evolution of Love, vainly hoping for a cock stand, had such covers. In the same series, which sold for a dime in those days, were the love letters of that Portuguese nun, Mariana Alcoforado, an overwrought and burdensome lady, certainly, whose existence I callously forgot until I read of her again in Rilke.”

With prose and poetry scaling the heights in deep meditation, William Gass brings meaning and shades of meaning that light a low fire under indigo, cobalt and aquamarine; around every aspect beneath and above the sky.