Ultramarine

Jean Taylor

From far beyond the sea,
from Sar-e Sang, 
the place of stones, comes
blue the colour of water
blue the colour of green
gold the colour that flickers
in the heart of a flame.

A cold country for sky-making,
a valley of blue mines 
of lapis lazuli and fool’s gold.

Blasted by heat and cold,
fractured veins bleed lazurite
to be ground into pigment,
blended, as mountains 
blend into sky, on 
a winter's evening,
lit by a crystalled moon.

The Science

This poem was inspired by learning that the pigment ultramarine was originally made from lazurite. Lazurite is a complex sodium calcium aluminium silicate sulphate. The intense blue colour is due to the sulphur inherent in the structure of lazurite. Soft and brittle, it is easily processed as a pigment. Lazurite was found combined with other minerals in a rock called lapis lazuli. Small crystals of pyrite (FeS2) are always present in lapis. Lapis lazuli has been mined for centuries in the mountain valley of Kokcha, Afghanistan. First mined 6,000 years ago, the rock was transported to Egypt and later to Europe where it was used in jewellery and paint pigment. Europeans called the expensive powdered pigment ultramarine, which literally means over the sea. Since the mid-nineteenth century ultramarine has been made synthetically, although lapis lazuli continues to be prized as a gemstone.

The Poet

Jean Taylor is a Scottish poet and paper lover whose poetry has been widely published in magazines, anthologies, and poetry websites. Her pamphlet Deliberate Sunlight was published by Black Agnes Press in 2019 and her latest pamphlet Litany of Coal was published by Red Squirrel Press in 2023.

Next poem: What Colour is Nine? by Philip Rösel Baker