The sun has lassoed rooftops
with its rays, and
the king has splashed
the light of day into my glass.
Have some wine, for passionate love
called out at dawn,
saying ‘drink up’ every single day.
Translated by Juan Cole
from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 233
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In “Rebellious God”, Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad writes:
“I’d happily exchange the golden crown of divinity
For the dark, aching embrace of a sin.”
She shares with Omar Khayyam a passion for passionate love and an allegiance to a kind of sin that is really unbridled divinity. Her style is intense and often meloncholy, however, in contrast to Khayyam’s upbeatness.
“Lassoed?”
That’s an interesting choice for a translator to make.
Pretty much what the original says. Americans didn’t invent the lasso.
…which is probably why the word comes from Spain.
Which is also not Persia.
When you started this feature, the link to Whinfield went to the original quatrain, but for months now it has just gone to the first page, and the reader has to search for the right poem. Is there a way to restore the previous practice?
Some kind soul posted the first 70 pages of Whinfield at a Wiki, which allowed me to link to individual pages. The other individual pages are not separately available on the web. Alas, I don’t have time to do it myself, so I’m linking to the book as a pdf.