Classic Poem

There was a time when in the wide-ranging country of that lord
where fishermen wielding their nets suddenly stir up the lake
in which the flowers are bright as fire and a sand eel burrows
into the mud, its nose sharp as a weaver's spindle, and a whiskered
scabbard fish leaps above the surface and a tortoise is overturned
suddenly as when a sharply beaten tatari drum stops short, and the fishermen
catch a dense school of carp glowing like swords and they take murrels
with feelers like the folded young leaves of palmyra trees,
there was a time when food was meant for sharing and that lord fed
many people in one place, but now it is over! His wife with her lovely
forehead and restrained purity, as he enters the world of exalted
being . . . . wishing to give him food, clears off a small dusty space
the size of a winnowing fan, her eyes endlessly
weeping, and cleanses it with cow dung mingled with the water of her tears.