Quatrain 13
Quatrain 13 of 75
“Look to the Rose that blows about us—"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow:
At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."”
Reflection · Spring
The rose does not open carefully. She does not budget her petals, does not save some of the fragrance for later. She tears the silken tassel of her purse — that tight bud, the gathered promise of weeks of growth — and throws everything at once onto the garden. Laughing. This is Khayyam's instruction for spring: not the careful accumulation of experience but the throwing of it. The rose's philosophy is the only philosophy adequate to her brevity: spend everything, now, completely, because the purse was made to be spent and the treasure was made to be given.
She is laughing because she has understood something that we spend our whole lives almost understanding: that the treasure given away is the treasure that mattered. That the opened thing was always the point. Look at her right now, in the spring air, already in the act of throwing. The laughing has already begun.