Classic Poem

Purananuru - Part 325

In a place defended by forests hard to cross—where men whose words
can be trusted kill porcupines, men who live lives of struggle and take
turns at drinking the water that oozes up after a cow and her calf
have dug at mud and then drunk whatever liquid may have collected in holes
once the fresh torrential rains have poured to their finish and ceased
in the wasteland where wild boars root in the dust and these men, when
they want to share slices of lizard flesh, cut up in the courtyard
of a small house with shelters for cattle made of branches
of otu, put them on the fires so that a smell of rich fat spreads
along the street to the spot where, below the shade of a sturdy
jujube tree with a dried top in a front yard, children whose heads
are easily hurt play with bows and arrows—the city is there
ruled by that man of great virtue, whose generosity never
halts but who can halt attacking armies
even when they are led by a king with a spear that has won victories!EnglishPulavans