My wife certainly claims (no doubt accurately) more and better colour
discrimination than me. And we just can't agree on where orange stops
and yellow begins. Neither of us are Greek...
> I like the use of 'staircase' as verb, Martin. I thought the finality of the
> rhythm of the last line effective too. 'So many words for so many colours':
> apparently we know the words the Ancient Greeks used for colours but not
> with certainty to what colours they referred. I like to ask myself what
> colour is the sea? For children it always blue but ...
> I've sometimes seen it claimed that women have (on average) a keener sense
> of colours than men - the argument runs that it is a consequence of descent
> from countless generations sorters and selectors of plants, herbs and
> flowers. I don't know if that is true, it may be a matter of cultural rather
> than biological heritage, but do know in my own experience that women tend
> to employ a more discriminating vocabulary of colours that males.
>
> On 26/03/2008, Martin Dolan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Early autumn slants an afternoon
>> of liquid light across the trees,
>> jade, olive, lime and emerald:
>> So few words for so many greens.
>>
>> They sway up hills to where sky starts
>> in stone-wash blue then reaches out,
>> stretches on its straining tiptoes
>> into vertiginous azure.
>>
>> Scuffed sandshoe white of cumulus,
>> blurred steel of storm clouds staircase up
>> to the darkest point of the sky.
>> Northward it's raining sheets of grey.
>>
>>
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