Classic Poem

In the rice paddy land around the city of the lord
of Karumpanur, cranes who have fed together sleep
on the branches of vañci trees and then they
pick off the blossoms of the ripened sugarcane
and on the land strewn with rocks, quails chase after rats that live
near the lopped-off roots of black-stemmed millet and they frighten
the little rabbits while blossoms with black stalks are falling
nearby from the iruppai trees, and though there is no festival,
there is toddy with flowers floating in it and the meat from big
ketiru fish for the bowls of farm laborers!
And we are his drummers, O greatness!
What is rice to us? What is gold,
or the liquor that heats the body?
Though I may lack them in my house,
he has great quantities! He has spread
his fame so wide that the earth
seems small! He pours ghee
more freely than water on my rice juicy
with abundant fat! He who protects us! What need do we have
now to suffer? With such a patron, let the Silver Planet rise where it will,
though it promises drought! I will know no days other than those
on which the fine leaves we have eaten from are folded and flung
away still filled with food!
And we are left to wedge out the bits then that stick between our teeth!