Image 6 from Khayyām's Songs
The Iraqi poet ʿAbd al-Wahhād al-Bayātī also drew on the mythic al-Khayyām in his poetry. In his last collection (Eastern Texts [Nuṣūṣ sharqiyyah]), published in Damascus the year of his death, 1999, he wrote the following lines:
Al-Khayyām apologized for meeting me
at the Observatory,
in fear of the informers,
for he had been indicted for his religion,
and I
for kidnapping the Sultan’s daughter,
being crazy for wine,
and dancing naked under the starlight. (p. 76)