Classic Poem

Their ribs stick out at their sides as if they were lizards that have been skinned,
for your family is starving and wherever you may look, you see no one who could lift
away their hunger! Since over and over you mourn that there are so few
ears here to hear you, why do you linger, bard! in this land? In a fine country
where the people are nourished by the overflowing water of the Kaviri River
undermining trees and streaming out like milk from the breast offered to a child
once the impurity of the time of birth has ended, there is a lord, a great man who wears
an ornament dotted with red on his broad handsome chest, who bows gently to his women,
but who fiercely locks away warriors into his prisons and because he does not command
his men to move against an enemy when the omens are bad and clearly indicate subversion
may exist within his land, those warriors of endless Martial Courage shout out
“We will die here!” and in a street handsomely built for the passage of chariots
they slap their swelling arms to the rhythm of a drum meant to quiet them down
and some men drinking strong toddy let the cups fall from their unsteady hands
while elephants, although no one rides on their heads, dance in the mud rendered
fragrant by that splashing toddy as they listen, with rapt attention, to the sound
of a mula drum that is being beaten somewhere within a towering mansion
in the city of Urantai, where he reigns as ruler!
If you forget about the gates of other kings and go to him, he will be generous!