27 Aban 1404
Quatrain 11 of 75
“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”
Reflection · Autumn 1404
On Sizdah Bedar in autumn — in spirit if not in date — this verse becomes more tender. The bough is turning. The loaf, the flask, the book, the beloved — all of it still here, but the bough is losing its leaves and the light is going amber, and the word enow carries more weight than it did in spring. Enough. Not paradise forever, not paradise at its most extravagant, but enough — for this afternoon, under this autumn bough, with these four things and this one person.
Khayyam is always teaching proportion, always finding the exact right word for the size of the thing. The bread is real bread. The wine is actual wine. The book is a book that someone wrote because they had to. The person singing is exactly themselves. The wilderness is the world as it actually is. Paradise? Enough.