The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and the beloved beside him in the wilderness: that is the whole of the paradise Omar Khayyam will admit to, and he offers it as a man who reformed the calendar of an empire and fixed the length of the year more exactly than Europe would manage for five hundred more. Each quatrain is four short lines, and each opens like a little door onto the same unbearable arithmetic: the rose is red because a buried king lies under it, the clay of the wine cup was once somebody's cheek, and no prayer, no learning, no argument buys back a single hour.