Wednesday, May 28, 2014


The Moving Finger Writes ...

When Night spreads its peace over tumultuous Day and birds pause in their proud, brave  songs of life, much arcane lore is whispered among the gray-garbed old ones gathered secretly in secluded glades.  Now grown very old, I am granted permission at last to don the robe and to sit at their councils.  Listening, privy to their ancient wisdom, I have learned much.
 
They speak in wispy, withered voices of legends from distant, fey, near-forgotten lands.  One such tale concerns a book.  Not a book as found in our libraries.  No, this is a book writ large — a book so immense that there are individual pages in it devoted to each and every living person.  And every person who has ever lived.  Also to be recorded in this book, they say, will be the future of humanity, stretching on and on into a blazing, unimaginable sunset.  It shall be recorded through the deeds, good and evil, of every person who shall yet live before our race, too, passes into that great unending darkness.

This vast book is arranged in a curious fashion.  No matter where you open it, no matter how you turn the gargantuan sheets of parchment [for such is the stuff of legendary books, my dear,] you will find that for each and every soul there are two pages, identified at the top with the person’s name.  Wherever you choose to open the book you will find, inscribed in an elegant elfin script, all the events of one single life displayed.

Look more closely, child.  The book is open to a name.  See?  On the left-hand page is written, neatly in order, all of the bad things that person has done.  And, as you might guess [this being a true legend,] on the right-hand page, again in strict order, each and every good thing he or she did is put down, line by line, day by day, detailed for all eternity in ink of deepest black.

New entries are made each day for those now living.  If an evil or bad thing, it is entered on the left-hand page.  If a good thing, on the right-hand page.

Attend me, now.  There is one curiosity in the entries.  If one has had an opportunity to do something pleasurable, something which does no-one an injury, and has for whatever reason abstained from the doing of it, the entry records the choice … on the left-hand page.
Four by four.

Let’s talk quatrains. First thing to know
Is that each verse has four lines. So,
When we are working in this style,
We’re thinking four (4) all the while.
.
With that all set, let’s count the beat.
There’s four? Te-tra-meter. That’s neat!
(If five, we’d call it ‘pen-ta-‘, no?
For three, ‘tri-’ is the way to go.)
.
Then there’s the rhyme scheme: it can be
AABB, ABAC,
ABAB, ABBA,
(and yes, this can go on all day.)
.
So there it is: a simple way
To structure what you wish to say.
(Quatrains are often where it’s at.
They’re all you’ll find in ‘Rubaiyat’.)