Bowl of Night

a bowl full of stars
shattered by sunlight arrows
sparking a new day

Kim M. Russell, 2017

My response to Carpe Diem #1295 Bowl of Night

A new CDHK month has begun and this month is entitled ‘Rubaiyat, Another Way’. It is all about The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet and scholar.

‘Rubaiyat’ means quatrain – a rhyming four line stanza – and Omar Khayyam’s work consists of 101 quatrains. In this first episode, Chèvrefeuille would like us to write a haiku inspired by the first quatrain, of which he has given us two slightly different versions. I prefer the second from an alternative edition translated by Edward Fitzgerald:

Wake! For the Sun, who scattered into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heaven, and strikes
The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.