В безмерности небесV bezmernosti nebes

This is your lot — go, and be content;
The working plan of heaven is not for you to change.

Dad was always into Khayyam, and especially in the last years of his life (though this particular song was written before his illness).

Interestingly, I can’t find the lines of the chorus (“When cruel struggle knocks you off your feet…”) anywhere on the internet — maybe they’re Dad’s own. Or maybe this translation simply exists only in that battered little book of Grandma Sonya’s, which Dad read every time he came to visit her.

Connoisseurs of his work will recognize the familiar riff from “Покойник.” He spent his whole life trying to find it a home — with Blok, with Shakespeare, and now with Khayyam.

There’s something very Dad about that riff :)

Happy birthday, Dad!