Autumnal Bliss Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Youth, you are gone, then how would you
Beauty, on thy sepulture take, my breath away.
Bring me a hundred kisses, a thousand more
Age, I detest thee; O autumnal bliss!
To the garden, lightening and thunder
Else the gardener, who or a rival though,
Rose in tears, how withered the leaves.
The sculptural tallness, ye distant love
Alas! Would ye not melt in my arm.
Seen once, but who would see again
Such glare from your dark hair, shines the cheek
Give a glance, cups of wine, ah! The red lips
Celebrate life, the moon thus vanishes in dawn.
Be a story, a fancy, how I implore
Wouldst not ye understand, or tender of age
Let a bygone day, yet few moments
I hold back the Time, awhile if you be mine -
What else then remains, in the end to be done.

Sadiqullah Khan
Islamabad
October 25,2013.

‘Then to the Lip of this
poor earthen Urn
I lean’d, the Secret Well of
Life to learn:
And lip to lip it
murmur’d- While you
live,
Drink! - for, once dead,
You never shall return’

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, XXXVII, Edward Fitzgerald.

Omar Khayyam: (1048-1131) , Persian philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and author of one of the world’s best known works of poetry, Rubaiyat.