I feel like I'm just driving along at a steady clip,
and I should slow down a little bit.
But I can't think of good stories.
However, I can give you some explanations
for the next problem, that should slow things down.
This is a poem called "A Friend Slipping Away."
And it mentions a picture that some of you may know.
It's a woodcut by Hokusai called Red Fuji.
Hokusai is the one that did, however many views of it
is, however many views it is of Mount Fuji.
And Red Fuji is one of the more famous ones.
Big, red-colored Fuji right in the middle of it.
A little clouds going across the top.
In fact, he described the clouds as a word here called windrows.
I don't know if you know what windrows are.
They are long, sometimes if you do old fashioned hay-cutting,
you cut, you mow the hay, and then you
rake it into long piles for it to dry a little bit before you
start to make it into piles.
And then the piles can be pitched onto a flatbed.
And the long things are sometimes called windrows.
That's all the information that you need.
"A Friend Slipping Away."
It must be evening there.
The sky full of clouds like those in Hokusai's Red Fuji.
Windrows drawn by an accomplished hand.
By now, he must be steering, bleary-eyed and dull.
The infant making for his lap, and the trail of drool gleaming
like a snail's.
Something's hushed about this scene
in which a wife sniffs meat and slices
peppers into neat strips.
The rows like three women who stride toward the white corner
of the screen.
Called to, the man lifts his head.
And perhaps, a memory sprouts white hairs or from a file
in which the past is kept some cruelty of Father's lights
like a fly on his plate.
He slides again.
Not sideways like the clouds gravity no longer tugs.
But tired, through the nets of deception,
through himself and the white bodies of his loves.
The arms of friendship, even his own child's need.
Trees watch him.
Beautiful and tragic, because of nature's greed
for the vaguely human.
Because men must die.
The clouds draw gauze around his breathing.
Each place he travels to, the sand slips open to receive him,
like a child refusing to believe, cupping his hands,
swallowing air.
Someone keeps calling.