Classic Poem

Endless in your charity, death-dealing in battle, our leader!
Greatness! Your elephant is like a mountain! Your army resounds
like the ocean! Your spear with its sharp blade shines
like lightning! You are strong enough to make the heads tremble
of the lords of the earth, and so what you do is never wrong!
I say nothing special. This is no new thing for you!
With your righteous, faultless scepter you offer protection
as a tiger protects a cub, and those whom you rule listen
only to the sound of cool water, never even in their
dreams hearing the noise of your army advancing
to cause your enemies suffering, to make them cry out, “Valavan!
May you live long but please, now, halt!” You are the ruler of a fine country,
eminently prosperous, of cities with rich fields whose people
in hospitality give their relatives from arid lands gifts:
scabbard fish that rice cutters pluck from the last sluice,
tortoises overturned by plowmen's blades, sweet sap
harvesters take from the sugarcane, and waterlilies gathered
by women who come to draw water at the great source!
Like the many rivers that descend from the mountains and flow
down from higher land toward the sea, every poet flows
toward you! And like Death when he is enraged, when he whirls
his ax against which there is no cure and the living
suffer, you flow with force
toward the lands of those two kings who oppose you!