Classic Poem

Like bamboo which has been bent in two and let
shoot up, horses are running and leaping. Flowers
are twisted into the hair of women with gleaming bangles.
Villages on poor land where roads barely exist are granted
to bards wearing fragrant, many-stranded garlands of bitter orange
while their fingers pluck the strings of small yals
with curving necks as they softly beat time. If you
were to try to count the elephants cut down in exultation
by the spear of that warrior who destroys those who dare
stare at him, neither the stars in the sky
scattered with clouds nor the drops of the cool rain would suffice!