8 Bahman 1404
Quatrain 6 of 75
“And David's Lips are lock't; but in divine
High piping Pelevi, with "Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine!"—the Nightingale cries to the Rose
That yellow Cheek of hers to'incarnadine.”
Reflection · Winter 1404
The nightingale has gone south. The rose is bare cane in the garden. David's silence and the nightingale's silence have merged into winter's comprehensive quiet. But the cry — Wine! Wine! Red Wine! — persists in memory the way certain music does, the way a voice you loved persists in a room after the person has left it.
In winter you hold this cry the way you hold a coal — carefully, aware of its heat, aware that it is the same fire that will warm the spring. Khayyam is giving you the sound of desire at its most unguarded: not desire fulfilled, not desire remembered — desire in the act of calling out, in the moment of the cry, before any answer comes. The Pelevi word for wine is the same word it has always been. The nightingale will sing it again in spring.