Six short lines, two small scenes, and a joke that takes a moment to land: Dave Bonta's "Khayyamesque" sends a churchgoer out of the service to put the sermon into practice, though not quite as the preacher intended.
The title sets the mood. Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet of the *Rubaiyat*, is known to English readers for brief quatrains about wine, fleeting time and a shrug at solemn certainty. The suffix "-esque" means "in the manner of," and Bonta borrows the manner, not the form. The best-known English versions of Khayyam rhyme tightly, while this poem is two unrhymed tercets. What carries over is the attitude: pleasure in the present, and wine as a quiet rival to the pulpit.
The first stanza gives us the pulpit. "Lord's day. My Lord preached" is clipped, almost a diary entry, and it plants the poem's key word. The quoted line, "To whom much is given, of him / much is required," is a version of a saying from the Gospel of Luke, where it warns that the more a person has received, the more they will answer for. The stanza ends on "required," a heavy, stern word, and the line break before "much" makes the demand hang in the air. Roughly counted, the lines run five, seven and four syllables, so the stanza has the shape of a haiku that stops one beat early, as if cut off mid-lecture.
Then comes the white space between the stanzas, which does the work of a missing sentence. There is no "but" and no "afterwards," only a jump from church to garden. The word "Lord" returns, now in "my Lord's wine garden," and the repetition is the poem's sly pivot. The same title that gave the sermon now owns a vineyard. If everything comes from the Lord, then the wine, the garden and the companion are all part of what "is given," and the speaker answers the demand the only way he thinks fits: by accepting the gift fully. The garden may also quietly echo the biblical vineyard, but the poem never says so. It lets the reader make the connection.
The second stanza loosens in sound as well as in morals. Its lines stretch to about nine syllables each, as if the speaker has finally exhaled, and then the last line shortens to five. The only musical click in the whole poem comes there, where "free" and "me" chime. Without a rhyme scheme to prepare us, that small echo works like a punchline.
The word "exceeding" is the sharpest choice. It belongs to the old, Bible-flavoured register of sermons, but it also contains "exceed." The preacher says much is *required*; the speaker was *exceeding* free, going beyond what was asked. The obedient and the disobedient reading sit inside one word. "Free" then does triple duty. It suggests unconstrained behaviour, familiarity or liberty-taking ("free with her"), and something freely given, like a gift.
The last line keeps the boast from turning sour. "And she free as me" drops the verb, as if the sentence were relaxing along with the lovers. It also makes the freedom mutual. "I took her" might sound like a conquest, but the closing phrase makes her an equal partner, matching him in the very quality he claims. The poem never says whether this is joyful, wicked or both, and it adds no guilt or moral aftertaste.
That restraint is what makes the poem worth reading. It does not argue against religion or mock the sermon. It quotes the preacher accurately, then lets the words bend under their own weight, so that "required" turns into an invitation. In very few words it shows how scripture's own language can be turned back on the pulpit, and it leaves the reader to decide whether the speaker is a rebel or the most literal listener in the congregation.