30 Aban 1404
Quatrain 14 of 75
“The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two—is gone.”
Reflection · Autumn 1404
In autumn the worldly hopes set in spring are almost all resolved now — ashes or prosperity, and the prosperous ones are in their anon, the desert showing through the white. Khayyam's verse becomes a kind of comfort here: this is how it always goes, the desert was always the underlying face.
The snow was real. It was genuinely there, genuinely beautiful on the dusty face of things. An hour or two — and what an hour or two it was, if you were present for it. The desert does not mourn the snow. The desert is the lasting thing, honest and undecorated, exactly itself. Autumn strips back to the desert face and offers you the chance to love it — to love the truth of things rather than the snow that temporarily covered it.