Classic Poem

At midnight crowded with darkness in the first
quarter of the night when the constellation of Fire
was linked with The Goat and from the moment
the First Constellation arose, formed like a bent palmyra,
and the one shaped like a reservoir was glittering
at the farthest limit, during the first half
of the month of Pankuni, when the Constellation
of the Far North was descending and the Eighth
Constellation was rising and the Deer's Head
sinking into the sea, a star fell from the sky! Not slanting east or north,
like a light for the earth surrounded by ocean, a star fell as roaring,
spreading fire stirred and swollen by the wind! When we saw this,
I and many others who had come to him in our need thought, “May the king
who rules a good land with a waterfall whose music is like a drum, may he
live without illness!” A feeling of despair spread throughout our
troubled hearts and we were afraid! Now the seventh day has come and
as great elephants lie sleeping on their trunks and the royal drum
tightly bound with its straps has burst its eye and rolls across
the ground and the white umbrella of protection is snapped off
at the base and ruined and the proud horses swift as the wind stand
stock still, he has reached the world of the gods! Has he
who was the lover desired by women who wear shining bangles
forgotten those women who were his companions? He was a man
the dark color of a mountain of sapphires! His strength bound up
his enemies and killed them. And to those
who wished him well he was munificent beyond measure!