The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XXXVII

One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste--
The Stars are setting, and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing--Oh, make haste!

This is the thirty-seventh quatrain of the FitzGerald's Rubaiyat. The poet says, one moment we are in this wasteland of complete destruction and annihilation (probably referring to the barren and life less desert that the caravan is travelling through during day time) and in another moment, we are in this well of life, this life giving and fertile oasis where we spend our night resting and replenishing our body and spirits. Now that the stars are setting and the dawn is about to break, we have to start our caravan again into the "dawn of nothing", into that unknown landscape that awaits us of which we know nothing. Life is like this only, we have moments of despair and abandon and moments of joy interlude. But life needs to move on, from one moment to another, looking forth into the unknown. An alternate interpretation could be that day time symbolizes death and nights the living (in desert that makes sense as nights are cooler and comfortable unlike the treacherous days ) and so, from coming nothing (day) and going to nothing (day), there is this brief interlude of night, which is life!