Classic Poem

He has gone to the burial ground in the forest where the male
of the kite with its red ears and the pokuval bird and the crow
with its strong beak and the owl perch without fear near the curving
surface of the red burial urn set down into the earth,
and then move wherever they please in the company of a pack
of ghouls! He who once loved to drink toddy! Like his women
whose bangles are gone, the families of bards have lost
their former glow and the beauty they had has withered away!
On the massed royal drums, the eyes have been torn open!
Elephants like mountains have lost tusks and no one rides them.
I did not know that Death with his blazing strength was savagely
marauding and that my lord, ah! he was the pitiful victim!
Because I have come, I am miserable! What will happen to those
who depend on me? As if I were someone dumb and blind
whose boat has overturned on a rain-swept night and his heart
is swollen with intolerable suffering and he sinks without hope
into the ocean, it would be best that I die in the spiraling
of this whirlpool of pain, this flood
of irresistible waves, measureless and unfathomable! It would be just.