Where is an intimate
friend
who’ll hear the secret
from me straight out–
of what human beings
have been
from the moment they began?
They
are
born
of toil
and molded
from
the clay of sorrow.
They wander the world for a time,
then
set
off.
Translated by Juan Cole
from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 338