Quatrain 4

دارنده چو ترکیب طبایع آراست

باز از چه سبب فکندش اندر کم و کاست

گر نیک نیامد این بنا عیب کراست

ور نیک آمد خرابی از بهر چراست
source, Dashti 19, p. 247

daarande cho tarkib-e tabaaye' aaraast
baaz az che sabab fakandash andar kam o kaast
gar nik nayaamad in benaa ayb keraast
var nik aamad kharaabi az bahr-e cheraast

(Dashti)

When the Creator constructed Nature

Why stop short of making perfect creatures?

If the model wasn’t good, who’s to blame?

But if good, why break it ... who can explain?

دارنده چو ترکیب طبایع آراست

ازبهر چه او فکندش اندر کم و کاست؟

گر نیک آمد، شکستن از بهر چه بود؟

ورنیک نیامد این صُور عیب کراست؟
source, Hedayat 11 (& Whinfield 126;
Forughi, 31 (Kasra), with second misrâ‘ reading:

ازبهر چه افکندش اندر کم و کاست

daarande cho tarkib-e tabaaye' aaraast
az bahr-e che ’u fakandash andar kam o kaast
gar nik aamad shekastan az bahr-e che bud
var nik nayaamad in sovar ayb keraast

(Hedayat & Whinfield; Forughi 2nd line variation:
az bahr-e che afkandash andar kam o kaast

Since mortal compositions are cast by Hand Divine,
Why then the flaws that throw them out of line?
If formed sublime, why must He shatter them?
If not, to whom would we the fault assign?
Saidi, quatrain 35, 'slightly modified' by Aminrazavi, p. 51

And FitzGerald's improvisation, 5th edition, stanza 86:

After a momentary silence spake
Some vessel of a more ungainly Make:
"They sneer at me for leaning all awry;
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
I have takenwhat follows in this paragraph, with modifications, from Mehdi Aminrazavi's Wine of Wisdom, chapter 2. Writing in the last quarter of the 12th century, fifty or so years (?) after Khayyam's death, Fakhroddin Razi speaks about Omar Khayyam and quotes this quatrain. It was likely the first quatrain attributed to Omar Khayyam which Khayyam wrote in Persian (see Elwell-Sutton, 36 and Aminrazavi, 51 -- full citation in Bibliography). In chapter 2 of The Wine of Wisdom (passim), Aminrazavi discusses the issue of theodicy (God's ways) central to the quatrain -- how a perfect God creates imperfect creatures. To show the sort of person Khayyam was thought to be, Aminrazavi gives biographical testimony from contemporaries and biographers who wrote after Khayyam had died. Khayyam is judged faithful and he is referred to as misled or perplexed. There is no question of his stance on Islam, his piety, as Aminrazavi cites evidence for this from his mathematical and philosophical writings and from the way others respected him, referring to him for example as hujjat al-haqq ('source and authority of truth'). The problem is not that his biographers viewed him, say, as both pious and defiant but as one or the other. Aminrazavi states (pp. 57-58) that this ambiguity in Khayyam reflects the character, the way of a 'complex figure who acknowledges that to exist is to suffer, to question, to doubt, and to wonder, and yet he acknowledges the religious dimension of humans by being a practicing Muslim.'

This quatrain appears on the website, http://128.187.33.4/persian/ and it is accompanied by a recording and by a metric chart, along with the text of the Calcutta manuscript used by FitzGerald. The Calcutta version and Hedayat's (11), are similar at least in sentiment but depart from Dashti's text by "reversing" lines 3 and 4 -- think of the 3rd line of the Persian in Dashti (the 3rd in my translation) coming last. I like the quatrain as Dashti has it. The third line startles, but the fourth sums up, outpunches the previous line by the message that the destruction of life, and a life that in all probability is a good and well-lived life, cannot be explained in the speaker's view. I have printed both Dashti's and Hedayat's text. Without a critical edition, and in the absence of discussion about these two 'texts,' we can't be sure which, if either, is original.
1. The creator/keeper/possessor/'divine hand' when he/it got ready the composition of natures (when the Creator constructed Nature) - I read chon as circumstantial rather than causal 2. Why did he go throw it away/ invalidate it (nature) by shortcomings -- why did he stop short of perfection? I found this line difficult; it is possible that اندر is part of the verb -- it is a compound verb: why did He throw shortcomings, destruction, ' deconstruction', into it, that is, Nature ( ش - ). Avery & Heath-Stubbs translate: "For what reason does He cast it into diminution and decay? Elwell-Sutton: "Why then did He disperse them once again?" (quatrain 19, p. 190, In Search of Omar Khayyam). But I don't believe anything was added, unless this is another way of expressing idiomatically 'coming up short' or slip-shodiness. If deficiencies were added, bad results would always occur and the point is that they do not. baaz here reminds me of the English 'go and do something' but baaz az che sabab may simply mean 'why.'3. If the structure did not come out well, who is at fault/to whom is (ke-raa-st) the fault? 4. If it comes out well, 'on account of why' /just why is there wrecking?

Questions about the quatrain: Is Khayyam thinking, trying to make sense of why, in a mathematically ordered universe or given mathematical certainties, should uncertainties exist by the hand of the Supreme Mathematician? I think so. And about the possibilities of a compound verb andar fakand(-ash): if kam o kaast meant 'decrepitude and death' then these 'additions' would fit with the last two lines -- why did he go and throw in 'disease and death'? Why did the Creator add this element of finality to the other elements in the mix of Nature? When I first read this quatrain I saw it this way -- anger at the sorrowful destruction of human life. Perhaps Avery/Heath-Stubbs mean this in their translation of the second line above. But Michael Hillmann's tranlsation is better:

When the elements were combined in creation
Why did the Maker endow them with transience?
If it did not work out well, fault is whose?
And if it turned out well, why destroy it?
Michael Craig Hillmann, Iranian Culture, p. 45 (see Bibliography)