Quatrain 24
Quatrain 24 of 75
“Alike for those who for TO-DAY prepare,
And those that after a TO-MORROW stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There."”
Reflection · Winter
The Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness — not from a minaret of gold or marble but from the absolute unknown that neither theology nor philosophy has ever successfully illuminated. And what does it cry? Fools. Not gentle, not consoling. Fools. Those who prepare for today and those who stare at tomorrow are told the same thing: neither strategy earns the reward. The reward doesn't exist in the form either group imagines it.
In winter this verse is the most honest companion. The Tower of Darkness is real in Dey and Bahman — the long nights, the compressed days. Khayyam is not offering nihilism. He is offering the freedom that comes from understanding the call: if neither strategy yields the imagined reward, what is left? Just this. Just now. Just the actual fact of being alive, which needs no reward to justify it.