Wine and Life

As Christopher Hitchens said: " It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime."

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!

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,

Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, 

The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, 

The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,

Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape 

Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and 

He bid me taste of it; and 'twas--the Grape!

The Grape that can with Logic absolute

The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:

The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice 

Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute:

Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit 

Of This and That endeavor and dispute; 

Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape 

Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press 

End in what All begins and ends in--Yes; 

Think then you are To-day what Yesterday You were--

To-morrow You shall not be less.

What, without asking, hither hurried Whence?

And, without asking, Whither hurried hence!

Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine

Must drown the memory of that insolence!

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, 

Before we too into the Dust descend; 

Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie 

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!

From The Rubaiyat. By Omar Khayyam, 1120 A.C.E.