Ikigai Daily
Menu
StillnessQuote

Do not let tomorrow steal today. Even a promised paradise can become an excuse for missing the life in front of you.

Modern verse inspired by the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam

LiteraturePhilosophy

The story behind the card

A modern verse inspired by the Rubáiyát, the four-line poems credited to the Persian poet Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), not a translation. Edward FitzGerald's English version of 1859 asks why we should fret about “Unborn TO-MORROW and dead YESTERDAY” if today is sweet. A later edition answers those who sigh for paradise: “Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go”, meaning the pleasure in hand, not a promise. FitzGerald even jokes that Khayyam, who helped reform the calendar, only struck tomorrow and yesterday out of it.

Türkçe oku
Bugününü yarına kaptırma. Vaat edilen bir cennet bile önündeki hayatı kaçırmana bahane olabilir.
Ömer Hayyam'ın rubailerinden esinlenen çağdaş dizeler

Bu dizeler, İranlı şair Ömer Hayyam'a (1048-1131) mal edilen dört dizelik şiirlerin, yani rubailerin havasında yazılmış çağdaş bir şiirdir; çeviri değildir. Edward FitzGerald'ın 1859 tarihli İngilizce çevirisi, bugün tatlıysa henüz doğmamış yarın ve ölmüş dün için neden dertlenelim diye sorar. Sonraki bir baskı da cenneti özleyenlere şöyle seslenir: “Peşin olanı al, veresiyeyi boş ver.” Yani vaat edileni değil, eldekini seç. FitzGerald'ın bir dörtlüğünde Hayyam, takvimi düzelttiği için övülen hesaplarıyla bile dalga geçer: Tek yaptığı, takvimden doğmamış yarını ve ölmüş dünü silmek olmuştur.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Omar Khayyam
Get the mobile appAbout our cards

Related cards

These cards share a subject or reading mode with the card above.

StillnessLiterature

The wound is where the light enters you.

The sentence condenses lines by Coleman Barks, the American poet whose free versions made Rumi a bestseller in English; Barks did not read Persian and reworked scholarly translations. His poem “Childhood Friends” (1990) urges the reader to keep looking at “the bandaged place”, where the light enters. It draws on the Masnavi of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic of Konya, who tells the wounded not to turn away from the plaster a spiritual guide lays on them: the healing comes from its light, not from themselves.

Attributed to Rumi; exact English sentence not matched to a standard textRead card
StillnessLiterature

The rose's lover must endure the thorn.

The Turkish Language Association's dictionary explains that people put up with the troubles that come with someone, or some work, they love. The rose and its thorn are an old pair in Turkish and Persian poetry; in classical Ottoman verse the nightingale longs for the rose, and the thorn often stands for the pain of love. English has “No rose without a thorn”, as does Turkish, “Dikensiz gül olmaz”, but this proverb adds that whoever loves the rose accepts its thorn.

Turkish, Persian variants ProverbRead card
StillnessLiterature

In every religion there is love, yet love has no religion.

This sentence has not been found in Rumi's writings, but it echoes a story in his Masnavi, the long Persian poem he dictated in Konya. Moses hears a shepherd offering, in homely words, to mend God's shoes, comb his hair and bring him milk. Moses scolds him, and God rebukes Moses: he was sent to bring people closer, not to drive them away. God's answer includes the line “The religion of love is apart from all religions.” When Rumi died in 1273, Christians and Jews joined his mourners.

Rumi (popular attribution)Read card
StillnessLiterature

Do not waste your life trying to solve the sky. No one came back with the answer. Sit, breathe, and taste this hour.

A modern verse inspired by the Rubáiyát, not a translation of Omar Khayyam. Khayyam (1048–1131) was a Persian mathematician and astronomer from Nishapur who led the team behind the Jalali calendar, the basis of Iran's calendar today. Four-line poems, rubáiyát, were credited to him after his death, and how many are really his is still debated. The verse echoes Edward FitzGerald's famous English version: of all who passed through “the door of Darkness”, “Not one returns to tell us of the Road”.

Modern verse after the Rubáiyát of Omar KhayyamRead card
StillnessReligion & Belief

The wise argue about heaven and hell. The cup in your hand asks a simpler question: are you awake to this moment?

A modern verse inspired by the Rubáiyát, the four-line poems credited to the Persian poet Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), not a translation. Its contrast between learned debate and the cup in hand runs through Edward FitzGerald's English version. In one quatrain the young poet eagerly hears scholars and holy men argue, “but evermore / Came out by the same door where in I went”. In another he sends his soul to bring back news of the afterlife, and it answers: “I Myself am Heav'n and Hell.”

Modern verse after the Rubáiyát of Omar KhayyamRead card
Next card in the archiveIf the universe is a riddle, you are not here only to suffer over the answer. You are also here to sing.Read next →