Classic Poem

We were on our way to him, he who is the lord of the Kaviri River,
where the fields murmur with water and laborers working among the stacks
of grain grow groggy with drink and fill their plates with yesterday's rice,
whole grains cooked soft—each grain, the husk removed, looking as if the petals
of the ripening bud of a trumpet flower had been spread open—with already cooked
rice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and rice water poured in to mix with the fruit of the small pakal vine,
with vallai leaves from the marshes and juicy pieces of horned fish and big black
murrel fish and the sour fragrant juice of sweet mangoes grown on high branches
casting shadows, . . . . . . . . . .
all boiled in a white pot with more rice from the inexhaustible paddy a large ring-bearing pestle
has pounded, rice brought them by a woman cook.
We were on our way to Killi Valavan whose noble fame is never-ending!
He it was whom I thought of! Nor would I ever go off anywhere else!
I would not go! I would not look into the faces of others! As my food,
at the wrong times for dining, I ate thin gruel made from tamarind
cooked by my drummer woman after she sold the fish she had caught
with a long bamboo pole! In my despair, I was standing to one side. And then
I was told, “Why are you standing there? He who is the most righteous
of the righteous, he who is the foremost hero among heroes, he who has
the greatest Martial Courage among those of Martial Courage, whose descent
is from the ancients, he wishes you to come to him because of your fame
so that you may eat the amrta you desire!” I thought of what I must
do next and I went off and cleaned my strong poet's stick and took
my black kinai drum with its clear-sounding eye which had been lying
dilapidated with its thongs cut and I tied it up with fresh strings,
drummed a rhythm on a new strong skin fit for music so that its thongs,
like an endless garland, resounded, and fearing it might delay the food,
I did not worship the god in the drum. And before I could express
my wish for anything, before I could say I had come with a desire
for strong-necked oxen who would never tire even dragging a cart
like a swift chariot through the mud, he responded at once! He gave me
many rows of cattle, their bodies as lovely as the stars that blossom
in the sky and many carriages for them to pull, that king of Tonri
mountain whose towering summit scrapes
against the sky and down which a waterfall descends, roaring in rhythm!