Awake! For morning in the bowl of night….

SEXYBEAUTY Is there anything worse than a fool who misquotes poetry? Well probably. But, it should have gone:

Come with Khayyám tum tetum tetum tetum,
Some strip of herbage strown….
Rattle tattle tat..
Where name of slave and sultan scarce is known,
Something something something

Then it goes

Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,
A flask of wine, a book of verse and thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

Anyhoo, I was trying to show off to Olivia in a poetic educated romantic way, but I thought it was Fitzgerald wrote it. Or at least translated it loosely from the Persian of the apocryphal Omar Khayyám.

I’ve got a cracking edition, which after much searching, must now I realise, be in the possession of a previous Mrs Maroon. Women, they’re all poison! I may have commitment issues, but enough of that, and it had a verse on the frontispiece, which went something like,

These pearls in ancient Persian (Gulf or seas or something) were laid,
Each as perfect as something or other
Then,
Khayyám pluck’d them from their sandy bed,
Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

D’ya get it? There’s no mention of your fellow, what’s his name? Kahlil Gibran.
I hope that clears it up for you.

Caroline, if you’re reading this, I want that fucking book back.