Classic Poem

She is like the city of Un, ruled by Talumpan whose words
are always true, where bards who catch little fish live
on one street and on another potters who gather honey after the bees
fly off frightened by the tannumai drum that is beaten by harvesters
of the white paddy, leaving their sweet hive on a jagged branch
growing from the node of a palmyra palm. If her mother had never given birth
to this girl whose darkened eyes look like blue waterlilies, then none of this
would ever have happened! The trees of our spacious harbor are suffering,
long chariots standing wherever
there is shade, and elephants with red-painted foreheads tied up everywhere!