Classic Poem

In your hand is a yal accustomed to the playing of a master. On your body
your hunger shows, because you can find no one to be your patron.
Around your waist you wear some rags soaked in sweat, patched together
with many different colors of thread and you have no choice but to move
carefully lest you rip open the new seams! Bard! As empty of strength
as the body of a man who lacks the will to act when he must, so
is the state of your large family burned black under the sun!
Since now you have traveled everywhere and you calmly ask
this of me, then I will tell you! Where the murderous elephants of kings
moan with their wounds in a camp of fluttering banners while other elephants
have been cut down and lie in their pools of blood, there, turning
the battleground into a field of flesh, his fighting army has passed,
the troops of the lord of Urantai with its tall shining mansions! It is he
who raises his spear against oncoming warriors and he is always ready to march
at once into the lands of his enemies! If you choose to go and visit
that Killi Valavan, who wears a fine garland and a handsome gold ornament
flashing like fire, you will not have to wait before his tall gateway and once
you have seen him, once you have gazed and gazed till you have had your fill
of gazing at how he gives away chariots in the middle of the day, you can be most
certain you will not fail to gain an ornament in the form
of a lotus that the bees can never taste, though they move toward it past the flowers!