Classic Poem

My mother is old. Over and over she complains about how many years
have passed and she is still alive and her life will not end. Hobbling
with so many small steps, a stick for an extra leg, her hair like
spread string, her eyesight gone, she cannot even walk to the verandah.
And my love wears her one meager, filthy garment and she is
hungry and as she thinks of how things stand with her she grieves.
Her body is faded, her breasts withered as the many children moving
beside her squeeze them and suck at them. In despair she plucks a young,
half-grown shoot sprouting on a kirai plant on a garbage heap that others
have picked near clean and she throws it into a pot without any salt
and sets it on the fire. She does not even remember when she ever
had rice and without any buttermilk she eats the green leaves
and complains about the Order of the World. Now you should make
the hearts of these two people happy as I praise you for the fame
of your generosity, which is like a cloud coming with lightning
and roaring thunder as it sheds its rain down on millet not yet
sprouting its ears of a lovely dark color, after it has been planted
among wild rice on a wide space of land new to cultivation
but burned over by men of the forest and transformed into a field.
You should make my family happy, all of them, because they are
shriveled up, consumed now by hunger. Yet should you even
give me a ferocious elephant with its upraised tusks, I will not
accept it if it is offered without goodwill. But if you should offer,
with joy and to please us, even a tiny crab's-eye seed, then
I will willingly take it! Kumanan, you who wield a spear,
sharp pointed! Greatly glorious lord! Famed for your victories!
Born into a flawless, towering lineage!
I ask you to be gracious and satisfy us! I who sing about you!