No. 192
How long will you lament what you have or lack?
And in this life, will you pass it with joy or black?
Fill the wineglass, for you’re uncertain,
This breath you draw in, will ever come back. *
Philosophical Reflection
Khayyam begins with a question that dismantles the habitual anxieties of possession. “What I have or lack” becomes the measure of self-torment — an echo of human attachment to both gain and loss. The tone is not indulgent but diagnostic: a reminder that the fixation on having is itself the root of suffering.
The second line shifts inward — how will you live this brief interval? With joy or in sorrow? In this pivot, Khayyam introduces the moral weight of attitude rather than outcome: life is judged not by duration or wealth but by the temper of spirit.
The closing couplet crystallises his philosophy of impermanence. The act of breathing — life’s most fundamental rhythm — is made precarious: the next breath is uncertain, the current one a fragile gift. Hence the command, “fill the wineglass.” Wine here is not mere indulgence but a symbol of awareness — to drink is to affirm life in its immediacy, before it vanishes into the unknown.
Its structure mirrors Khayyam’s worldview expressed in On the World and the Duty: since no certainty governs the future, the only ethical stance is presence — the art of joyful lucidity. The poet does not reject mortality; he domesticates it. In this quiet rebellion, Khayyam elevates each breath into a sacred wager against oblivion.
Footnote
* Source: Trabkhaneh, Homaei no. 192, translated by Kam Austine for the book Philosophy in Verse
تا کی غم آن خورم که دارم یا نه
وین عمر بخوشدلی گذارم یا نه
پر کن قدح باده که معلومم نیست
کاین دم که فرو برم برآرم یا نه
Related Treatises: On the World and the Duty (رساله فی الکون و التکلیف), On the Universals of Being (رساله در کلیات وجود)
Internal Themes: #Impermanence #Existentialism #Acceptance
Published as part of the Philosophy in Verse Series — under “Time & Impermanence.”
Kam Austine 
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