The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam is one of my favorite poems. Khayyam was a poet, mathematician, scientist, and theologian who lived in Persia from 1048 to 1131.
Persia was a Muslim country at the time. Khayyam's repeated references to wine in his poem is a source of controversy. Some think that he was pretty much as his poem says, a drunken hedonist. This may be true, but I am inclined to think otherwise. To my best understanding, it was illegal to drink in Persia - alcohol is strictly forbidden in Islam. It seems to me that his talk of wine would have gotten him into trouble, had it been meant plainly.
Some think that Khayyam's poem is a somewhat veiled reference to God, Spirit, and life in general. Khayyam may have been a Sufi, an Islamic mystic. I favor this view, but I don't really have any solid evidence to support it.
Whatever the case, he apparently got away with it, since he lived to be around 83 years old. And he wrote some good stuff - and it was well-translated by Edward FitzGerald.
One of my favorite quatrains is:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
It's kind of spooky, but cool. Many of the verses in this poem have come into popular use. Sometimes we hear someone talk of "a book of verse, a jug of wine, and thou." That's in the Rubaiyat.
Anyway, that's why I posted the poem. I hope you enjoyed it.
