love poem

As the cassias blossom
in small chains,
long red anthills send forth winged ants,
the animals have no appetite,

the season of rains
is on,
my dear girl,
and your man
who was in love with battle
has remembered

and come home.

Because peacocks moved like you
and jasmine opened
like your brow
and the does had scared looks like you,

my girl,

thinking of you, your lovely brow,
I've come
faster than the rains.

Kuruntokai 27

Like milk
not drunk by the calf,
not held in a pail,

a good cow's sweet milk
spilled on the ground,

it's of no use to me,
unused by my man:

my mound of love,
my beauty
dark as mango leaf,

just waiting
to be devoured
by pallor.

Narrinai 63

On the new sand
where fishermen,
their big nets
ripped apart by an angry sea,
dry their great hauls of fish

in a humming neighborhood
of meat smells,

a laurel tree blossoms
all at once in bright clusters
fragrant as a festival,

but this unfair town
is noisy with gossip.

And what with an unfair Mother too
keeping strict watch over us,

will our love just perish here

Ainkurunuru 192, 193, 197

My love whose bangles
glitter, jingle,
as she chases crabs,

suddenly stands shy,
head lowered,
hair hiding her face:

but only till the misery of evening
passes, when she'll give me
the full pleasure

of her breasts.

Kuruntokai 38

He is from those mountains

where the little black-faced monkey,
playing in the sun,
rolls the wild peacock's eggs
on the rocks.

Yes, his love is always good
as you say, my friend,

but only for those strong enough
to bear it,

who will not cry their eyes out
or think anything of it

when he leaves.

Kuruntokai 204

Love, love,
they say.
Love
is no disease,
no evil goddess.

Come to think of it,
dear man
with those great shoulders,
love is very much like an old bull,

enjoys a good lick
of the young grass
on the slope
of an old backyard:

a fantasy feast,
that's what love is.

Kuruntokai 119

As a little white snake
with lovely stripes on its young body
troubles the jungle elephant

this slip of a girl
her teeth like sprouts of new rice
her wrists stacked with bangles

troubles me.

I

My Lucy, when the maid is won
The minstrel's task, thou know'st, is done;
And to require of bard
That to his dregs the tale should run
Were ordinance too hard.
Our lovers, briefly be it said,
Wedded as lovers wont to wed,
When tale or play is o'er;
Lived long and blest, loved fond and true,
And saw a numerous race renew
The honors that they bore.

CLII

Love, to give law unto his subject hearts,
Stood in the eyes of Barsabe the bright,
And in a look anon himself converts
Cruelly pleasant before King David sight;
First dazed his eyes, and further forth he starts
With venomed breath, as softly as he might
Touched his senses, and overruns his bones
With creeping fire sparpled for the nonce.

And when he saw that kindled was the flame,
The moist poison in his heart he lanced
So that the soul did tremble with the same.