Classic Poem

For us, after wasting away for many days and straining
our eyes with all the searching, to be granted an elephant
adorned with gold in exchange for our songs in the lofty, radiant
palaces of kings with their glittering swords means far less
than the great coming of dawn in the western land dense
with forests that is ruled by Ati, whose fame is immense,
where any friend may be admitted but even the moon, should it seek
battle, could not enter, where the turrets for the archers
are furnished with machines of war, and in many outlying,
close-set fortified points, men with reddened eyes exchange
swigs of toddy and after drinking themselves full crave
something sour, and stuff themselves with jujube fruits
and the sweet-sour kalam berries, then climb the handsome
dunes along the river flowing with honey and pluck black plums
which they sit and eat. There, we who have come receive, set out
on palmyra-leaf baskets, endless portions of rice
and meat, thick with fat, from fierce boars caught for us by hunters!