Here you will find the Poem When The Sword Of Sixty Comes Nigh His Head of poet Hakim Abu al-Qasim Mansur Firdowsi
When the sword of sixty comes nigh his head give a man no wine, for he is drunk with years. Age claps a stick in my bridle-hand: substance spent, health broken, forgotten the skill to swerve aside from the joust with the spearhead grazing my eyelashes. The sentinel perched on the hill top cannot see the countless army he used to see there: the black summit's deep in snow and its lord himself sinning against the army. He was proud of his two swift couriers: lo! sixty ruffians have put them in chains. The singer is weary of his broken voice, one drone for the bulbul alike and the lion's grousing. Alas for flowery, musky sappy thirty and the sharp Persian sword! The pheasant strutting about the briar, pomegranate-blossom and cypress sprig! Since I raised my glass to fifty-eight I have toasted only the bier and the burial-ground. I ask the just Creator so much refuge from Time that a tale of mine may remain in the world from this famous book of the ancients and they who speak of such matters weighing their words think of that only when they think of me.
