29 Bahman 1404
Quatrain 27 of 75
“Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.”
Reflection · Winter 1404
In winter this verse is fully inhabited. The years of frequent argument — with doctors, with saints, with the stars, with the books, with the self in the long quiet — and the same door. Always. Still. But evermore came out by the same door — evermore is the word that carries the winter quality. Every time, every inquiry, every great argument fully attended. And evermore, the return.
This is Khayyam's most honest self-portrait: a man of extraordinary intellectual gifts who used them all and arrived at the same place everyone else arrives. Not because the gifts were insufficient but because the door is the door. It opens nowhere else. In winter you know this in your bones, and you stop being surprised by it, and in the cessation of surprise you find something that almost resembles peace.