8 Mehr 1405
Quatrain 37 of 75
“Ah, fill the Cup:—what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn TO-MORROW and dead YESTERDAY,
Why fret about them if TO-DAY be sweet!”
Reflection · Autumn 1405
In autumn, to-day's sweetness is of a different character — amber rather than gold, melancholy rather than exuberant, but sweet in the way that only things with an obvious expiration date can be sweet. If to-day be sweet — Khayyam makes this conditional, leaves open the possibility that today might not be sweet. On the days when it is not, the verse is a quiet question: is there something sweet here that you are missing because you are fretting about the unborn tomorrow or grieving the dead yesterday?
Unborn Tomorrow and dead Yesterday — in autumn this pair is more present than in summer. The winter is visible on the horizon; the summer is in the past. And here in the middle: today, still alive, still capable of sweetness.