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Tuesday, December 29, 1998 By Reg Henry
As the New Year approaches, once again we consider the state of our lives and ponder the eternal question: What the heck does "lang syne" mean anyway?
The Scottish poet Robert Burns, who was so great we have a statue of him near Schenley Park even though he never played for a Pittsburgh sports team, wrote "Auld Lang Syne" knowing full well that people would be too inebriated to think much about it.
That's because on New Year's Eve many of us take a cup of kindness.
Did someone say "cup of kindness"? Hey, make mine a double.
That's the problem. We take a cup of kindness, and before you know it, the designated poetry/song interpreter can't make himself heard above all the kissing and blowing of horns.
So let me tell you, in this quiet moment, that it means "long since." Yes, old long since. Go figure.
In Scotland, of course, New Year's Eve is a very big deal. In celebration, the Scots eat haggis - sheep's stomach containing offal and seasonings - and, having survived that, they feel much better about the coming year, knowing that things can only improve.
Well, it's a theory.
As for me, my thoughts at the close of this year are with another fun-loving poet, one put into my mind by Bill Clinton, no less.
On the day that the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend impeachment, Mr. Clinton made another "I'm really, really sorry, although not really" speech in the Rose Garden.
In that address, he mentioned that "an old and dear friend" had recently sent him "the wisdom of a poet" and he began reciting lines that are dear to me as a secretly sentimental person:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
This is from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," a 12th-century Persian poet, at least as he was liberally translated by an Englishman, Edward FitzGerald, last century.
I previously worked for a paper in California, which had an informal Moving Finger award given for acts of conspicuous literary folly. Indeed, I believe I won the award on several occasions, but because I happened to be the paper's editor, the staff was kind enough not to tell me.
As I listened to the president, it occurred to me that this perhaps was not the best poet for him to be quoting, because FitzGerald's Omar was nothing if not a hedonist, which some might say is what got our hero into trouble in the first place.
Omar liked the gals, he liked the wine, and if Big Macs had been available back then, he would have liked those, too.
After all, it was he who wrote:
A book of verses underneath the bough
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness -
Oh, wilderness were paradise enow
This could be easily updated for the Monica era:
A pile of affidavits underneath our brow
A frosty shake, a hamburger - and thou
Beside me playing in the Oval Office
Oh, Oval Office like paradise - wow!
OK, so it loses a little in the translation. Still, there's another reason why Mr. Clinton should have kept his moving fingers to himself. The image in "The Rubaiyat" recalls a famous incident in the Bible.
In Daniel 5:5, King Belshazzar of Babylon, while hosting a big party fit to be recorded in an ancient Seen column, sees the fingers of a man's hand appear and start writing on the palace wall. As interpreted by Daniel, the words on the wall foretell the imminent end of the king's reign.
Actually, this is not the image Mr. Clinton has wanted to convey for "old long since." But Omar does have other timely advice:
Now the New Year reviving old desires
The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.
Pass the cup of kindness, I say.
Reg Henry's e-mail address is: rhenry@post-gazette.com.
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