7 Tir 1405
Quatrain 18 of 75
“I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.”
Reflection · Summer 1405
In summer the roses are at their most red — the full crimson of July roses, the deep color of Tir's sun. Khayyam's verse deepens every rose you encounter: where did this redness come from? What was this ground before it was garden? Every summer abundance is built on what the autumn and winter received into the ground.
I sometimes think. In summer, standing in a full garden, this provisional thought is easy to believe. The redness is earned. The matter is ancient. The beauty is built on depth that goes all the way down. The hyacinth season is past by summer, those particular heads already drooped and dried — but the summer garden holds the matter of a thousand previous springs, and the rose that is most red today is the current form of something that was here long before it was a rose.