Poetry. In A THOUSAND YEARS OF PERSIAN RUBAIYAT, Reza Saberi translates over 1,500 quatrains from more than a hundred Iranian poets from the beginning of written Persian poetry to the present. A ruba'i is a poem in four lines, which is complete in itself and expresses a single feeling or thought in a very concise and elegant language. The subjects of rubaiyat include divine love, the ecstasy of love, mystical knowledge, and the nature of life and existence.