Grey's Poetry Pages - Rubaiyat 51 by Omar Khayyam

http://www.okonlife.com/poems/index.htm

This is part of 200 to 600 rubaiyat, or four line poems done by Omar Khayyam in about 1080 AD. This guy was an awesome dude. He solved some major math problems and was an astronomer. (There's a crater on the moon named after him.) I admire him for that, but he was also a poet. He wrote in Farsi, but a poet named Edward J. Fitzgerald translated them. Sometimes faithfully, sometimes he "improved" on it for his Engish audiences, but he stayed pretty close to the spirit of them! The above website has really good translations of all the rubaiyat--literal, meaning, Fitzgerald's, and even German! Here is the poem.


The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on : nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

I was immediately drawn to this poem because of my love of reading. The poem's spirit is really closer to destiny being written already and can't be changed, but I like to think of it in relation to books and stories I read. The story is written, and no matter how much I regret reading it, or wish it was different, it is written and can't be changed. I have cried over a tale, wanting it to be different, but the "moving finger" has already moved on to the next sentence. I love this short, bittersweet poem. I especially thought my niece would like this one, being a writer. I wonder if writer's think this way? If I was writing, and something truly tragic happened, I would be tempted to delete it and rewrite the happier version my heart wanted. A true writer must follow the characters where they are destined to go and not give into this, I suppose! That is why I'm not a writer. I shall remain a reader, and happy.

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