27 Farvardin 1405
Quatrain 23 of 75
“Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust Descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer and—sans End!”
Reflection · Spring 1405
In spring this verse is almost scandalous — the most direct confrontation with death inserted into the season of maximum life. Make the most of what we yet may spend — this is not frantic but full. The most of, not the fastest use of. The full spending of a spring morning is not rushing through it but inhabiting it completely: the bread, the wine, the verse, the person, the bough above, the grass below.
Sans end — this is what waits. Not emptiness but the permanent absence of the capacity for wine and song and the company of singers. Use these while you have them. Spring is offering them. Take them in full.