Classic Poem

I spoke of the man with the great bow, master of the hunt, who aimed
his arrows with the utmost precision, bringing down an elephant, slaying
a tiger with gaping jaws, dropping a hollow-horned spotted stag,
felling a boar with a head heavy as a mortar, burying
his point in a lizard that had taken refuge near him in a deep hole,
he who was widely famed for his skill at killing, consummate in the art
of archery, but just who was he? He who had been killing did not
seem to be someone who made his living in that way but he appeared
to possess immense wealth. Was it that lord of a richly yielding mountain
with a waterfall cascading down its side, was it Valvilori
on whose broad and handsome chest dried sandalpaste rests
or was it someone else? Still I decided that I would sing a song
and I said to my dancing women, “Now I will sing. You spread the clay
over the mrdangam drum, pluck the raga on the strings of the yal
and blow on the trumpet that is open at one end like an elephant's trunk,
play on the ellari drum, play on the akuli drum,
softly beat on one of the eyes of the patalai drum,
place in my hand the black staff that foretells the future,”
and I approached him. When we had sung all the twenty-one themes
of song before him as it was right for us to do since he was a lord
and then addressed him as “King!” he was embarrassed, for the title
surely was his and when we told him though we had wandered across
every country there was no hunter anywhere who might be compared
with him, he would not even let us ask for whatever we wanted!
He gave us boiled fatty meat from the deer he had killed in the hunt,
he gave us toddy that was like melted ghee and right there,
in the wasteland, he said to us “Take this!” and gave us
fine, faultless gold mixed in with heaping piles of blue sapphires
all from his mountain, he who is the lord of the mountain
of Kolli which is majestic and lofty, which has caves
around its summit, he who has the will
for victories, he who gives without ever holding anything back!