Classic Poem

As I was resting against the root of a jackfruit tree and my clothes
in tatters looked like the ruffled black wing of a kite
in the cold, wet season, as I was utterly worn out and in pain from my
wearisome going to and fro through the varying lands and I was not thinking
of myself at all, a chieftain saw me. He was a man of great wealth,
a hunter who was holding a powerful bow in his hand, on his head
a glowing diadem of blue sapphires shooting out brilliantly clear rays,
his feet with their fine anklets flecked with blood from the slaughter
of a whole herd of deer! I rose to my feet and I bowed to him
but he put out his hand and he sat me down. And before his young men
off wandering through the forest could come and catch up with him,
he made a fire where rapidly he cooked tender meat with fat on it
as pure as ghee and he gave all of it to me, saying, “You eat this,
along with your large family that has been burned black under the sun!”
We ate it as if it were amrta and we sated the gnawings within us
of our hunger and we drank cool water from a cascade descending
down the side of a mountain flourishing with lovely trees!
Then when I began to take my leave of him, suddenly he said to me,
“I am a man of the forest! I have with me no other precious
ornaments to give!” and to me he gave the shining necklace
of pearls he was wearing around his neck, along with a dense
armlet complete with its clasp! Then I asked, “What is your country?”
but he would not tell me his country. When I asked him, “What
is your name?” he would not tell me his name! But on the road
I asked and I heard from many others who he was, that he was Nalli,
the protector of handsome, far-famed Totti Mountain, of that towering
hill. It was him! the lord of the soaring mountain
from which the sweet water flows down glittering like cut crystals!