15 Years On: For John

1999

Ah Love! Could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
     Would we not shatter it to bits-- and then
Re-mould it nearer to our Heart' Desire!

2014

Here with a little Bread beneath the Bough,
A flask of Wine, a Book of Verse-- and Thou
     Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow.

From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Fitzgerald translation, second edition, 1868 (the first crappy old book I ever bought), quatrains CVIII and XII, respectively.

Happy Day!