#rubaiyat

In one lost life we made that secret shrine At nights when constellations would align In sanctified skies, wherein we'd withdraw To find mortality's dividing line.

These days, I greet my soul, bereft of awe; Confined in blinding ice that cannot thaw, Where shards of after-pangs as hail will fall When fingers shape a pistol neath my jaw, And, 'Bang!', I shout toward the glassy wall To blast the etched-in scenes; to not recall These afterlives that locked me up, supine, With no means to fly, and no place to crawl.

Above, abides a place where you were mine In fading away as our souls untwine.

XXXVII

Ah, fill the Cup:— what bouts it to repeat How Time is slipping underneath our feet:

Unborn To-MORROW, and dead YESTERDAY Why fret about them if To-Day be sweet!

XXXVIII

One Moment in Annihilation's Waste, One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste—

The Stars are setting and the Caravan Starts for the Dawn of Nothing Oh, make haste!

//

XXV

Why, all the Saints and Sagés who discuss'd Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust

Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn

Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust

XXVI

Oh, come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;

One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;

The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

//

XLVI

For in and out, above, about, below, 'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,

Round which we Phantom Figures come

and go.

//

XXVII

Myself when young did eagerly trequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument

About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went.

XXVIII

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

1909

London

Hodder & Stoughton