V-II

With battle axe smite the Bistoon Mountain,
The time is short trust on sky too in vain.
Leave the wise men thus in their headaches own,
Did the spark raised from the axe or from stone?¹

1.         I have anglicized Baistoon (to Bistoon) for poetical beauty. Farhad had taken a pledge with the King of Persia to dig a canal from Baistoon Mountain. against which the King pledged to marry his daughter (princess) with him. There was a long controversy amongst Persian historians, poets or phillosophers whether Farhad was killed by his own axe or from a stone rolling from the mountain top. The readers would find a hint of that controversy in the above mentioned quatrain (twin couplet).