Decided to take a break from writing posts and stumbled upon Carpe Diem’s latest subject #past regrets and future fears.

“This month it’s all about “The Rubaiyat” by Omar Khayyam, a 12th century Persian poet and scholar. It’s his legacy we are using this month. Through his quatrains we get a glimpse of the time he lived in. And even today his work still renown and loved as we can see this month”.

Omar Khayyam (image found on Pinterest)

Today I have another beautiful quatrain for you to work with. In this quatrain one of the themes of “The Rubaiyat” returns again, wine and drinking it. In one of the earlier episodes I shared already a few quatrains in which this theme is mentioned.

Let me give you the quatrain for today:

Ah! my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears –
To-morrow? – Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand Years.

© Omar Khayyam

Background:

“The Cup that clears” = a glass of wine; the meaning is not unlike drinking to drown one’s sorrows over past regrets and future fears. The end of the verse seems to mean something like “tomorrow, the ‘me’ of today will just be another part of history”. According to some, in Omar Khayyam’s day, “yesterday’s 7000 years” was reckoned to be the number of years of human history that had elapsed since the creation of Adam and Eve, though FitzGerald, in his first edition, thought it signified 1000 years for each of the 7 planets.

My Tanka (5-7-5-7-7) is based on the above quatrain by Omar Khayyam

From this sparkling glass
A sip is all I ask for,
And I’ll carry on…
This moment now, let me live,
And forget- what was,will be…

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