Joe Bennett: 13th century Persian poet Sa'adi's words still relevant 800 years on

Tourists at the tomb of Sa'adi in the Iranian city of Shiraz. Photo / Getty Images

A DOG'S LIFE

A year or two ago I quoted a 13th-century Persian poet on the subject of hyacinths.

If thou of fortune be bereft
And of thy store alone are left
Two loaves, sell one, and with the dole,
Buy hyacinths to feed the soul.

It's a lousy translation but a nice idea, suggesting that we do better to take pleasure in the present than to care about a tomorrow that may not come. Of course, in the 800 years it's been in existence the poem hasn't stopped anyone amassing wealth, nor has it increased the sale or appreciation of hyacinths, but that is not the point. Poetry, as Auden observed, makes nothing happen.

The poem came to mind this week because I was given - and yes I'm as surprised as you are - a pot of hyacinths. There are three of them in the pot, of which two are budding in the fatly thrusting way of hyacinths and the third is already in flower, a fleshy head of bluey-purple blooms that fill the kitchen with - well, I was going to say a fragrance, but this isn't a fragrance, nor yet is it an aroma, it is a smell.

A nice smell, for sure, but still a smell, and as with all smells, however pleasant in dilution, you wouldn't want to be locked in a small cupboard with it.

But I am delighted by my hyacinths and having duly admired them I thought of the Persian poem and went to find it but the anthology I remembered it being in was no longer in that storehouse of treasure, the downstairs lavatory.

Nor yet was it in that other storehouse of treasure, the upstairs lavatory. Nor even on those shelves in my study that it pleases me and harms no one else to refer to as my library.

Presumably then I must have lent the book to someone, which means that that's the end of that. (Never lend books. Just give them. Either way the book isn't coming back so you may as well get credit for your generosity).

It didn't take the internet long to tell me that the Persian poet was called Sa'adi. I once knew a maths teacher in Canada called Sa'adi. He was a older man, Iraqi by birth, modest, honest and gloomy.

When I was appointed master of a boarding house he told me matter-of-factly that the place was haunted. Had he seen the ghost himself? Oh yes, he said. It had sat on the end of his bed.

Boarding houses are frenetic places, full of fizzing kids. But in the holidays after my first term, with the kids gone and the dorms empty and only me in residence on the dimly-lit third floor, this one was eerie.

Floorboards creaked. Windows rattled. Doors inexplicably slammed. And I, a 26-year-old rationalist and scoffer at all things spiritual, remembered the words of a gloomy Iraqi maths teacher and got myself so worked up one night that I locked the door of my rooms and sat there hugging myself and drinking scotch for the courage, and when my bladder filled I didn't dare go down the corridor to the toilet so I peed in the waste bin instead.

But that is by the by.

By now, I expect, Sa'adi the maths teacher will be as dead and buried as the ghost he told me of, and as Sa'adi the poet who was a native of the city of Shiraz and is still apparently a celebrity there after 800 years.

His tomb is vast and on April 21 each year a crowd gathers to remember him. He has a crater named after him on the planet Mercury, his words are printed on the back of Iranian banknotes and even woven into a carpet laid in the United Nations Building in New York. He's particularly known for his aphorisms:

• Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.

• People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet.

• Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance.

All three are as fresh and apt today as they were when written. In other words telling the truth hasn't changed the truth. Poetry makes nothing happen. We were fools then and are fools now. But it's consoling to have it well put.