Quatrain 10
Quatrain 10 of 75
“With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultan scarce is known,
And pity Sultan Mahmud on his Throne.”
Reflection · Summer
The strip of herbage just divides the desert from the sown. In the heat of Tir or Mordad, there is nothing more valuable than this margin. The desert on one side, the harvest on the other, and here in the middle, nobody's slave, nobody's sultan, just this: the grass, the sun, the wine, the friend, the afternoon.
Sultan Mahmud on his throne merits pity here. Not because his conquests were wrong but because the throne is a confinement more complete than any prison. He cannot visit this strip without his retinue and his protocol and his weight of office. The strip belongs to no one. In summer it is most fully itself — abundant, warm, the desert dry on one side and the harvest nodding on the other. Khayyam's contentment is the contentment of someone who has understood the geometry of freedom.