Text (sixth contemplation: Blue-black)

Translation of Chinese poem accompanying the sixth of nine contemplations from the seventeenth-century Japanese artist Morishige.

"How depressing is it at the accumulated old graves! All colour has gone, but the joints remain linked. When the year is young the remaining flesh lies on the grass of spring. How blue-black are the remains of the skin in the evening wind!

On the places washed clean by the continuous autumn rains the Bones are slowly uncovered. When once the morning sun will shine, it will pierce the skulls. These elements make them be wild things. Alas! For many kalpas they are sunk in the Yellow Springs."