Classic Poem

How can you be so coldly cruel, so without compassion?
As we were playing our small yals in the cevvali raga of longing
and singing of your forest, the look of it during the monsoon!
we saw a young woman in grief that seemed to have no end,
her darkened eyes glowing like dusky, fragrant waterlilies but overflowing
with tears that fell to wet her breasts adorned with their ornamentation.
Bowing down to her, we asked of her, “Young woman! Are you
some relation to the lord who wants us to be with him?”
With her fingers like budding red kantal flowers she brushed
away her tears and then said to us, “I am no relation of his!
Hear me out! Pekan, whose fame glows, hungers for the beauty,
they say, of another woman who resembles me and in his resounding
chariot he pays his frequent visits
to the lovely city that is all encircled with jasmine!”