Each game
of chess
means there’s
one less
vari-
ation left to be played
Each day
got through
means one
or two
less mi-
stakes remain to be made
Not much is known
Of early days of chess beyond a fairly vague report
that fifteen hundred years ago two princes faught
Tough brothers for a Hindi throne
The mother cried
For no one really likes their offspring fighting to the death
She begged to stop the slaughter with her every breath
but sure enough one brother died
Sad
beyond belief
she told her winning son
You
have caused such grief
I can’t forgive
this evil thing you’ve done
He
tried to explain
how things had really been
But
he tried in vain
No words of his
could mollify the queen
And so he asked
the wisest men he knew the way to lessen her distress
They told him he’d be pretty certain to impress
by using model soldiers on a checkuered board
to show it was his brother’s fault
— He thus invented chess
Chess
displayed no inertia
soon spread to Persia
then west
Next
the Arabs refined it
thus redesigned — it
progressed
Still further west
And when Constantinople fell in fourteen fiftythree
One would have noticed every other refugee
included in his bags a set
Once in the hands
And in the minds of leading figures of the Renaissance
The spirit and the speed of chess made swift advance
through all of Europe’s vital lands
Where
we must record
the game was further changed
Right
across the board
The western touch
upon the pieces ranged
King
and queen and rook
and bishop, knight and pawn
All
took on the look
we know today
— the modern game was born
And in the end
we see a game that started by mistake in Hindustan
and boosted in the main by what is now Iran
become the simplest and most complicated
pleasure yet divised for just the kind of mind
who would appriciate this well-researched and fascinating
yarn
