"Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle": The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

In life, death informs all things. Think of it as the booby prize of cognizance. This is as true for those who choose to repress it, perhaps even more so. It's the primary reason Freud got to have what has euphemistically come to be known as a consulting room (check out Ernst Becker's groundbreaking The Denial of Death to let all this sink in, long and hard).

For those who might like their answer in a more timely, lyrical fashion, there is the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám as translated by Edward FitzGerald. I was recently reminded of the Rubáiyát by an article in the Times Literary Supplement (January 9, 2009) entitled "The Angry Omar," though it might more appropriately been titled "The Wine-Soaked Omar." It is a fine article written by Daniel Karlin, fine enough to prompt me back to the Rubáiyat, which I've haven't visited in many a year.

Two points Karlin makes are of particular editorial importance. The first:

In the Persian text the rubáiyat are independent poems, grouped according to custom by end-rhyme. FitzGerald saw how some of these separate poems might be linked to form a narrative and argumentative sequence, by analogy with the classiccal Greek or Latin "ecolgue."

The second:

(FitzGerald's) attitude to translation is summed up in a phrase that has become the rallying cry of "free" translators against their literalist opponents: "Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle."

There were five different editions of the Rubáiyat in FitzGerald's lifetime and, since they are all relatively brief, being composed of anywhere from 73 quatrains to just over 100, frequently all 5 are published in the same volume. The verses I've chosen to highlight all come from the final 5th edition. Enjoy.

7.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentence fling:
---The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

8.

And look—a thousand Blossoms with the Day
Woke—and a thousand scatter'd into Clay:
---And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshýd and Kaikobád away. ----

15.

And those that husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,
---Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As buried once, Men want dug up again.

16.

Think in this batter'd Carnavanserai
Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day,
---How Sultán after Sultán with his pomp
Abode his hour or two and went his way.

19.

And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean—
---Ah, lean upon it lightly, for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen. ---------

(Think Isaiah: all Flesh is Grass)

20.

Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past regrets and future Fears—
---To-morrow? Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterdays Sev'n Thousand Years.

21.

Lo, some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
---Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before
And one by one crept silently to Rest.

22.

And we that make make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new Bloom,
---Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend ourselves to make a Couch—for whom?

Well there is a little taste, of both sweet and bitter wine. I'll try to delve into more verses in a future post.

Speaking of second parts, in last week's archival posting of Lilliput Review poems, I promised a second dip into the double size issue, #53, from February 1994. Here it is.

Cherry blossoms swirling
--------------in the wind:
---------------------one thousand little poets

--------Jamie Sweeney

a hilltop puddle
choked
with clouds

Bill Hart

¶trees turned to fence
sky to window,
ocean to the drowning ground

Scarecrow

Snow Chimes The End Of The Human War

Snowgrains strike
the rust-iron train trestle
above the frozen creek.
They clang loud as bell towers
in the world inside the dove's eye.
In our world,
they barely make any sound at all.

christien gholson

Sigmund Freud On Coming To Terms
-------------With His Father
--------(Based on Freud's Revolutionary Dream)

"I stood on the railway platform
waving good-bye to a blind man."

D. B. McCoy

/ modern /

everyone's a masochist.
who hasn't shaved, bled?
those who grow hair free i'm sure
have refused butter on their toast?
turned off tv and yawned through a book?
altered their chemical makeup
just to stint the truth?

the candle that burns twice as bright
burns half as long i guess we burn
twice as long, we sad dim fuckers.

tolek

6:57 P.M.

wearing your
purple
sunglasses

I just can't
care

anymore

C. Ra McGuirt

Well, those were different times, indeed. Here's a little something that sums up change nicely.

the sky colors
of dawn have changed
to summer clothes

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

A Pair of Nines (Plus): Richard Brautigan, Galway Kinnell, and the Lilliput Archive

Cover by Bobo

Tuesday just seems to swing around before you know it, so it's time to dip into the Lilliput Back Issue Archive. Before hitting that, let's thread some loose ends into a post-modern early Valentine and, oh, yeah, supply an update on all things (Lilliput) print and publishable.

I've begun printing up the new issues and stuffing contributor envelopes, a process that usually takes about two weeks. Following that, regular subscription copies of issues #'s 167 and 168 will begin shipping, that's about 3 weeks out. That process takes about 4 to 6 weeks on its own.

Simultaneously, I've received the Basho Haiku Challenge chapbook proof back from the proofer. The usual bonehead typos and logistic hiccups will be corrected and copies will begin to print up and probably ship sometime around March 1st (yeah, that's simultaneous with the above - don't ask). Stay tuned for further updates.

Meanwhile, back on the blog front, while checking out the work of Langston Hughes, Galway Kinnell and, Richard Brautigan, all who had birthdays over the past 5 days, I ran across a pair of nines I thought I'd share:

Nine Things

It's night
and a numbered beauty
lapses at the wind,
chortles with the
branches of a tree

-giggles

plays shadow dance
with a dead kite,
cajoles affection
from falling leaves,
and knows four
other things.
One is the color
of your hair.

Richard Brautigan

9

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water utters
the cantilliations he sang in his first spring,
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and creeps away over the stones, one sees
they all live to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps
taken
away from one's kind, toward these other kingdoms,
the hard prayer inside one's own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one's own,
a world almost lost, in an exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.

Galway Kinnell

Because the Tuesday post usually has a few general lyrical news items, here's one to turn Valentine's day, um, inside out:






Two accounts relating the above "phenomenon" may be found here and here. Though the NYT's use of the above cover is salacious (spell check read this as "delicious"), Guardian UK nearly trumped it with a nice panel from the original "Night of the Living Dead." Truly, after Zombie Haiku Miss Jane could not be far behind.

Any day now, someone is going to officially declare the zombie revival (un)dead. My apologies; things have been a bit jumbled around here the last few weeks, so it seems perhaps I best leave my mixed up holidays right here. But a little humor goes a long way when untangling thread.

This week's back issue is Lilliput Review #53, from February 1994. This issue had an extra 8 pages, for a truly brobdingnagian total of 24. I believe I've mentioned before that the further back in time I go, the more removed I feel from the type of work I look for now. The magazine has been something of a life journey, a lyrical journal composed with the words of others. Who I was 15 years ago is at once distinctly different and fundamentally the same as who I am today. Perhaps even the selections I make from the work back then are tinted by the way I see things now. It's been a long strange, trip, as the poet Robert Hunter said. Next month will be the 20th anniversary of the publication of the 1st issue of Lillie and I guess that has me looking back, as well as forward. For now, let's dip in and see what was happening 15 years ago this month, on the short poem front, through the lens of a particular small press editor.




Doubt Robbing Perfect Faith

in the woods

a caterpillar covering itself
with the scales of a lizard.

Vogn

-----/ self serving /
like a simile

Tolek

zapruder moment

---------------the
---------------heart
rears back,
---------------spraying
---------------pink
---------------sawdust.

-----------Joy Sawyer

Gum

everywhere in
the pink dress,
her body snaps

Chad Buser

Pissing and trembling -
laugh at me crickets

Issa

Separation(s)
---with apologies to Issa

After dinner,
empty wine bottles stand in judgment.
I relieve myself from your porch
and fall ass-backwards
over the moon.

Richard D. Houff

the water so smooth the moon touched it
like a face
touches a mirror

Thomas Wiloch

1565.

shaved the poet
in half-moon
with words of broken ice.

Guy R. Beining

Since this was such a large issue and the selection above comes from only the first half, I'll revisit #55 next week for the second half.

One final side note of interest: this was Issa's first appearance in a Lilliput publication.


best,
Don