Classic Poem

You removed the anguish constricting glittering Vilankil where the young women
who wear bright bangles leave the mansions embedded with sapphires that shoot out
rays to dazzle the eyes and then they go and dance on a stage of sand
raised high and stretching straight out and as white as pearls from the long
ripe shells, O Poraiyan with your swift horses and with your elephants
taking the field! If our songs are long, then they are too long! If they are short,
they say too little! And so it is that in our hearts we come to feel bewildered!
By men like us, with muddled minds, your glory can never be sung through to its
entirety! And yet into this great world, towering poets have been born and how
can we refuse to live on and continue the tradition? We hear you saying, “If only
Kapilan were alive today, he whose fame was radiant and whose learning was immense,
he who with his eloquent tongue could produce, on the instant, a taut
and complete poem, how truly wonderful that would be!” But yet I will sing
in a way that will be worthy of your might
upon the field of battle, I will sing of how you overwhelmed your enemies!
as if we owned it, there where our king lives, where we can enter
his great formal audience in daylight with our heads held high!
So smooth the approach for those who come in need but should I think
of those kings who have made their joint resolutions and risen up
against Kotai of the swift horses, the cup of whose hand never
desists from giving gifts to those who have come to him,
who holds back nothing, who shames the generosity of the clouds,
and chooses to protect us, then that land of his—he who holds power
within his strong hand—seems like the territory a shepherd who wears
a garland of branches strung with fresh leaves, his clothes soiled,
his mouth pursed, dares not even skirt
with his flock, their heads so small, because it is the wide range of a tiger!