Quatrain 54
Quatrain 54 of 75
“I tell Thee this—When, starting from the Goal,
Over the shoulders of the flaming Foal
Of Heav'n Parwin and Mushtari they flung,
In my predestin'd Plot of Dust and Soul”
Reflection · Winter
Parwin and Mushtari — the Pleiades and Jupiter, the two celestial markers that were in their positions when Khayyam came into the world. He is describing his birth not as a personal event but as an astronomical one: certain configurations of the sky, at a certain moment, over Nishapur, produced him. The predestined Plot of Dust and Soul was prepared in the stars before he arrived to inhabit it.
In winter this verse is the most intimate of the Rubaiyat's astronomical meditations — the night sky of Dey and Bahman is at its most brilliant, the Pleiades high and cold. You were born under your own configuration. The predestined Plot was set. You are living in it. This is not prison. It is location.