Just a couple of hours to the east of us, in Madrid, the trees are already blossoming:
In fact, the blossoms are already shedding petals, which reminds me of Omar Khayyam:
And look a thousand Blossoms with the day
Woke – and a thousand scatter’d into clay
Much as I love the English rendering by FitzGerald, I thoroughly recommend getting hold of a copy of the Penguin Classic The Ruba´iyat of Omar Khayyam translated by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs.
It’s a translation of a selection of Persian ruba´iyat into bald, but correct English. Very different from the poetical versions we are used to, it is still a fascinating read, and adds depth to the wonderful work done by FitzGerald.
There is no one-to-one correspondence between the versions, but it’s possible the two lines I quoted were inspired by:
The skies’ vault only brings flowers out of the earth
To crush them and consign them to earth again.
