The Rubaiyat of Owatta D'khayyam (rescued from Fitzgerald by G.L. Morrison)

Concerning the history of The Rubaiyat of Owatta Dkhayyam

Owatta Dkhayyam was a 12th century mathematician, teacher and astronomer from Nishapur in Persia. As an astrologer her predictions were well-respected, though perhaps misunderstood by her contemporaries. We can only speculate what 12th century Persians made of her references to Ford Caravans, Gertrude Stein, Stonewall and Dow/Jones. She left her papers to a French cousin who published them after her death under his own name, Nostradamus.

As well as being famed as an astronomer, Owatta Dkhayyam was renown as a lover.

She was also the author of numerous rhymed quatrains, a verse form called ruba'i in Persian. Owatta's four lined epigrams were subsequently brought together in collections called Rubaiy'at and recorded in various manuscripts. So popular were the odes, a complex treatise of lesbian sex and gardening, that they were a staple on the bedside tables of Persian ladies for many centuries.

This gave birth to a literary movement. Any ruba'i devoted to lesbian sex and gardening was called Owatta Poem in her honor.

Over 700 hundred years later in 1857, one such Persian pillow book of Owatta poems found its way onto the bedside table of Alice FitzGerald, a Victorian woman of letters and a Persian scholar.

Her companion, Ellen or Rose Avelt, brought the edition back as a souvenir of her travels. The inscription inside the book suggests that Miss Avelt believed she and Miss FitzGerald could make good use of the 'tips' the book provided. From this one might guess they were both avid gardeners.

The confusion over Miss Avelt's first name stems from intimate correspondence to Alice FitzGerald signed with both the names Ellen and Rose. One or the other may have been a pet name or as some biographers speculate they may be two women.

Alice FitzGerald is known to have gardened with a number of Roses. But one should not make too much of this, as it was a different era, an era of innocence. We cannot judge by modern standards the lifestyles of two or even three spinsters cohabitating.

Nor can we attach modern meaning to phrases of filial affection found in their letters such as "I count the days until I can spank your sweet fanny."

It happens that Alice FitzGerald had a brother named Edward who fancied himself a poet. Although he spoke not a word of Persian, he decided to translate The Rubaiyat of Owatta Dkhayyam into English. He asked his sister what it was about. "Wine, women and song. And gardening," she paraphrased.

He asked his sister to read it to him. With a few discreet coughs, Alice attempted to do so. Mostly she shrugged and said "There is no equivalent to this in English." (Which during the Victorian era was true.) Sometimes she blushed. Blushed and shrugged.

"It doesn't really matter," Edward told her. "The Italians have a witty saying that translations are like spouses: a beautiful translation is apt to be unfaithful, a faithful translation is apt to be ugly."

Edward's sister was so offended by this she refused to read him any more.

When he had finished his 'translation' of what would one day be one of the most popular poems in the English language he took it to the least expensive printer he could find. The typesetter in question had sold the letters w, d and t to a pawnbroker earlier that same week. Out of necessity and poverty, he transformed Owatta Dkhayyam into Omar Khayyam.

"Who'll know the difference?" he asked Sir Edward.

"Who indeed?" answered Sir Edward. (The first of many revisions that FitzGerald would do on this poem began with him trying to remove the offending letters from his quatrains.) And thus the Rubiaya of Omar Khayyam by Ewar FizGeral found its first printing. After modest success, Edward was able to afford a printer who had the entire alphabet but the moniker Omar Khayyam stuck. Until now.

The Rubaiyat of Owatta Dkhayyam

1

Wake! But Poets don't. Having made of each night
a word of stone or stars; some private endless reve(l)ry. Their flight
from morning is legendary. And in her bed she has caught some
lovely, loving remnant of last night who moves her like the waking light.

2

To protect a dream, I put my left hand across my eyes
but heard a woman's voice within the bedroom cry,
"Awake, my Little one and fill the coffee cup.
Life is waiting to be drunk. The future does not advertise."

3

I did not know her, that woman, or the ones who came before.
Through the open door I shouted "I'd like more!"
Did I mean coffee or her? "In the time you have to stay; stay.
When you're gone, I won't remember what I asked you for."

4

Now when the New Year arrives, reviving simple Desires
the prudent Soul retires.
But what is prudent about the soul that like fireworks
ignites, fills up the unsimple sky and as quickly expires?

5

The heart, like a garden, perspires Lilac and Rose.
Love might first take seed where no one knows.
Someone weeds here. Someone tends the roots, trains them
where to grow. What happens to the garden, when the gardener goes?

6

Lovers lips are lock't if not in kissing, then in some divine
memory of kissing. Uncoupled heaven and nature cries "Whine! Whine! Whine!
You without me, my forever Whine!" --the Nightingale cries to the Rose.
And what puts blush upon her yellow cheek is what the rose says back in time.

7

Fill the time with remembering
Love's clinging fire. But cast off the regretful snow in favor of spring.
Its birds are brighter and better singers.
Time's bird wears her heart on her wing.

8

Outside the gates of Babylon
a hundred women sweet or bitter run
to greet the coming Dkhayyam. And hear that footstep stop
outside the door of one who did not come.

9

Each Morn a thousand Roses she brings, you say:
Which she leaves beside the Rose heaps of yesterday?
In this first summer month that brings the Rose
the dustmen shall take more than just her heart away.

10

Her? Responding "Well, let them take it! What have I to do
with Dkhayyam, these roses, poetry, immortal love or you?
Let heavens bluster tears, Time's gales and Rust do as they will
You cry till Hunger calls you to some other supper - I heed not you."

11

Reigning or resigning herself, amid those mown
roses, in an alley that just divides the desert from the town,
Dkhayyam sat waiting; slavish and forgotten.
Finding neither pity or peace upon her rosy throne.

12

Into this strange paradise Dkhayyam's heart went winging
And found the girl who filled the wilderness with singing.
Brought her books and jugs. A single verse of bread and wine
and found she needed not a thing.

13

Some for the promises of the world and some
for the promise of a world yet to come;
every promise is the splattering of rain in an empty street,
the drumming of a drummerless drum.

14

With roses blowing all about them, "Look around,"
she says laughing "the wind understands the nature of gift and theft."
Not understanding, Dkhayyam kissed her square and round.
Her silken lips in that torn garden were treasure to be found.

15

The thought grew up in her yellow as wheat, a grain
in a field of like thoughts. Unthreshed, this main
thought: Having kissed you once, I want nothing more
than to know when I might kiss you again.

16

Every hope we set our heart upon
will burn cold. Or else begin to warm
everything. We'll have stars for light
when the fire is gone.

17

Think how in some battered Ford Caravan, we may
find love made there travels between the tailgating nights and days.
Yet remember like unvalidated parking, how love after love
abode her destined hour and went her way.

18

They say Love with the Lion's tooth and the Lizard's tongue
courts us to drink her deep glories from
out of her open mouth; liquors us with head-strong kisses wild as
any sleeped imagining, breaks faith and makes religions of the faiths they're broken from.

19

I sometimes think of her sacred garden where
grows a flower more red and pink than any rose would dare
and breathes into my mouth nectar sweet as hyacinth.
My tongue, my finger, dig for roots. I would whole be buried there.

20

Mouth to mouth, reviving. Tender lips bring
breath to lips that do not breathe. Leaning
into her river --ah, lean lightly! For who knows
what kisses her lovely lips has yet to spring.

21

Ah, my Beloved, fill me like a cup
drained of past regrets and future fears, but filled up
with tomorrows-- all the tomorrows you have to give.
Yesterday's sev'n thousand and don't stop.

22

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
as well, if not as often as we loved the rest.
Women who took us in and took us
well in hand and palpitating breast.

23

And we that now make love in the room take
pleasure in the love we took by the lake
dressed only in Summer and each other's kisses.
Boaters out for pleasure smiled for our pleasure's sake.

24

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend.
Nights together, before nights into days descend.
Night into night and under night (and you) to lie
without reason, without song, without end.

25

Sagely, saintly our two worlds were thrust
into each other like a hand is thrust
into the wet and quivering moment. There is much to be discussed
and more to do with lips than discussing. See how mouths are stopt with lust.

26

Oh come with old Dkhayyam and leave the gossips
to talk. We are but a glass from which some pleasure sips.
Nothing and this one thing is certain. The rest is lies
and lives of lies that flower from out dry and jealous lips.

27

Eager, young, frequent and myself and staying
as ready for argument as love and we went about and about it like children playing
doctor or playing saint. In all seriousness, playing.
I did press my hands to your flesh as ferverent and as full of faith as praying.

28

With them, love did sow some wise and wild seeds
that my hand grew to suit its own wild needs.
And this was all the harvest that it grew or needed
"We came like rain in cloudbursts the wind had seeded."

29

And like the clouds, Love bursts us out into
the universe unwitherable, unwasted
and not knowing Why you love but Who
and like the wind caring not where it began but where it's blowing to.

30

Oh many a forbidden thought of you conspires against me.
Enters, without asking. And is sometimes a hurried burglar
trying at the lock and sometimes a landlord with a proprietary key
arriving to take stock of insolent memories that mock their own notoriety.

31

Like a pilgrim searching for each woman's centre, knocking at each woman's gate,
how often I sat at the road to a woman's heart like a hitchhiker waiting
for a ride; hoping to unravel myself and my knotted fate.
And oh, the women who unlaced me there while I did wait.

32

Her love was the Door for which I could not find a Key.
Her eyes, veiled as promises, through which she could darkly see;
and for a while our mouths were filled with talk of her and me
then empty-mouthed as first hunger there was no more of her for me.

33

Then rolling my eyes and heart to heaven I cried "When
will she return?" Heaven echoes "When?" My blind heart reaches
for what it cannot catch, plays a game none can win.
Like children playing blindman's bluff with night pressing in.

34

Woman, sometimes you're a stranger and sometimes I see
the in(di)visible me in you, the you in me.
Pressed to the soft mirror of your body
like a lamp in darkness, passion illumines me.

35

Over the whole earth what do poor lips earn
with their kissing. The secret of my life unlearned
is murmur'd lip to lip; soft truths like "Love and
live forward, there is nowhere to return."

36

We harbor soft truths like fugitives;
mute and articulate kisses answer questions we don't dare words for.
Ah! the active lip I kissed and questioned too inquisitive.
How many answers might these kisses take --and give!