Classic Poem

You tried to play a forceful melody but the strings of your yal
altered at your touch to sound the vilari mode of grief.
Your heart felt weak and you set out. Then, on seeing the omen
of a housewife spreading her hair to dry, you paid your homage
to the god who lives in the shadow of prickly pear trees on salty land.
Bard! You are coming now with hunger in your stomach, sadly joining
your palms together in respect and you keep asking over and over,
“Will I see him?” Listen to how well we stand! Accept the fields
he has granted you and eat your fill or else wake up at night
and feel your anguish. Either of these two things you can do
at once. They are so simple. He was renowned for defeating
the brave men who used to appear in battle before his walls
and seize great herds to take back to their own city. He crossed
the flood of arrows they had loosed at him upon the raft
of his war drum and he killed them and he freed his herds.
Like the moon which escapes from between the sharp fangs
of the devouring serpent as the whole world grieves for it,
he would return with fame, with a herd of many cows
and calves that he had wrested from the warrior Maravars.
Like a snake when it sheds its skin, he has gone off now
to the world which is so difficult to attain. On the shore
of a small stream in a forest, in an inaccessible place,
his body has fallen, pierced by arrows as if it were a target
collapsing, quivering upon its fixed base. But the name
of that hero with his great renown is inscribed on a stone
under a pavilion raised up of cloth, on a small site
no one else can fill, and that stone
is adorned with the beauty of a guileless peacock's feather.