When life comes to an end it will be the same in Baghdad or Balkh,*
When the cup brims over, it is the same if sweet or bitter:
Be glad, because after our time many a moon
Will grow full, and then wane.
Lit.
*Balkh, in what is today north Afghanistan, was in Khayyam’s
time the
easternmost city in Khurasan, the north-easern
province of Persia.
Baghdad was in the south-west, at the
other end of the Eastern Caliphate.
Each day a leaf falls withered from the tree
Whose leaves make up the life of thee and me,
The leaves are counted and the last is there--
Ready to fall before thy destiny.
Richard Le Gallienne