The Antidote?A Reading From 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ...

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread?and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness?
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

?Omar Khayyam (1048?1131), translated by Edward FitzGerald

What makes all the difference between heaven and hell? In this poem, the speaker has the perfect recipe for happiness. But are we clever?or simple?enough to listen and to heed his advice?

ANCIENT WISDOM: An antique map of the Persian Empire. Omar Khayyam (1048 to 1131) was a Persian poet, mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer. (Photos.com)

We begin with poetry. Is there anything more restful than to flick through a Book of Verses underneath the Bough of a favorite tree? We read a phrase silently, say it aloud, and fall into meditation. ?Is that Truth? Is that Beauty?? we ask, and wait for an answer. Sometimes we wait for a minute, sometimes for many years, but enlightenment always comes.

In that moment, our polite order of words and the roughshod earth are no longer opposed. Where some writers see conflict between civilization and nature, Khayyam sees peace. But such peace can become boring?and boredom brings sadness and stagnation. To complete the scene, therefore, we need a sense of fun and mischief. We need a ?Jug of Wine.? The taste of this wine is pure pleasure, all the more luxurious when set against the cleansing taste of the humblest food, a plain ?Loaf of Bread.?

But what is pleasure without companionship? The speaker looks for a friend?a mysterious figure who sings in the ?wilderness.? Left to imagine who he or she might be, we are led to ask ourselves whom we would turn to in our hour of need. Would it be our husband or wife, our guardian angel, or God himself?

At this point, notice how FitzGerald includes a non-rhyming third line, left to strike out on its own. This gives tremendous emphasis to the word ?Wilderness,? before anarchy is tamed with the final rhyme in the last line, restoring harmony to the reader?s mind.

At the poem?s conclusion, the singing voice transforms the ?Wilderness? into ?Paradise.? The archaic word ?enow? means ?enough,? yet the word?s sound also reminds us of the power of the present. The theme of carpe diem, or ?seize the day,? tells us to make the most of life.

Does this mention of ?Paradise? change our view of the rest of the poem? When we reread the stanza (whether under a tree or on the subway), we may wonder if the ?Bough? is, in fact, in the Garden of Eden. Pursuing this Biblical interpretation, do the bread and the wine refer to the Eucharist?and the voice in the wilderness to our savior? Alternatively, a Buddhist interpretation may be implied within these lines. After all, the Buddha taught that the endless suffering in the wheel of samsara and the eternal state of nirvana are two perspectives of the same truth. Or we may prefer to see Khayyam as a philosopher of hedonism.

The poem brilliantly unites the domestic with the divine, the romantic with the religious, and the mundane with the transcendent. The words are specific enough to conjure up a mood and a setting, while broad enough to let us find our own meaning. There?s certainly no harm in acting upon them in the most literal way possible?by finding a tree and flicking through The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, some bread and wine in hand. Closing our eyes, we may soon be swept up into another world; perhaps off in the distance, we can see The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light. (Quatrain I)

Omar Khayyam (1048?1131) was a Persian poet, mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer. Quatrain XII is taken from Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a selection of verses attributed to the Persian poet. FitzGerald?s translation was the first in the English-speaking world, and the first edition was published in 1859.

Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.

Source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/arts-entertainment/a-reading-from-the-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam-61007.html

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