Classic Poem

The bards who sing their honeyed songs to the small yal
with its body round and dark like a berry on a kalam bush
have left now, and beside the high hitching stakes, flocks
of forest peacocks linger as the elephants are all gone!
They say Ay's women retain no ornaments except their marriage talis,
which cannot be given as gifts, that his palace falls into disrepair
unlike the palaces of those who have no renown spreading
across the world, those who fill their bellies with spiced rice
sweet to the tongue, those
kings with their war drums who give nothing away to others!