What is life....? [The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam]

What is life?

[The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam]

There was a water-drop, it joined the sea,

A speck of dust, it was fused with earth;

What of your entering and leaving this world?

A fly appeared, and disappeared.

Of all who went on this long road,

Where is the one who has returned to tell us the secret?

Take care of leave nothing for your needs on the two-ended way,

You will not be coming back.

I saw an old man in the wine-shop,

I said, “Have you any news of those who have gone”?

He replied, “Take some wine, because like us many

Have gone, none has come back.”

A religious man said to a whore, “You are drunk,

Caught every moment in a different snare.”

She replied, “Oh Shaikh, I am what you say,

Are you what you seem?”

I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry,

Half a loaf for a bite to eat,

Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot,

Will have more wealth than a Sultan’s realm.

You have seen the world and all you have seen was nothing,

All you have said and heard, that too is nothing:

Running from pole to pole, there was nothing,

And when you lurked at home, there was also nothing.

Suppose the world went as you wanted, then what?

And suppose this book of life were read through, then what?

Let me suppose a century of self-gratification left,

Even supposing we had a century more, then what?

See what I’ve got from the world nothing;

The fruit of my life’s work? Nothing:

I am the light of the party, but when sit down, I am nothing;

I am a wine-pot, but when I’m broken, nothing.

Every now and then someone comes saying, “It is I.”

He arrives with favors, silver and Gold saying, “It is I.”

When his little affair is sorted out for a day,

Death suddenly jump out of ambush saying, “It is I.”

-//-

[Selected Poems of The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam

-From the Translated version by Peter Avery and John Health Stubbs]