Classic Poem

All you men who live in the camp! All you men who live in the camp!
In the hand of the drummer is a spear! In the hand of the bard
who carries a small yal with a body curving downward and strings
that sound sweet is a shield! A sight to see, like densely packed
close-set sacks filled with new rice. . . . . . . . . .
The hero who around his hair is wearing a withered garland because
the king arrived at his mighty palace encircled by the noble entourage
that does his labors, that hero with his shining, powerful shoulders,
enemy arrows swarming around him, shed his blood—O how the field
turned to mud with it!—when a long spear hurled with furious
rage entered his chest and then fell to the ground alongside
his anklets dripping human fat. . . . . . . . . .
All the men around him said when they saw it, “Because no more
villages where the farms have fields of grain with ears twining together
and waving in the wind were left to give away, he gave a village
with barren land, the only one remaining, to the chief
of that poor family.” As they praised him, he bowed down his head.