Classic Poem

If I think that I'll receive an elephant and go home,
all the elephants like hills on which glowing clouds
are caught have been shot full of arrows and have died.
If I think that I will take away a tall chariot decorated
with a lotus-shaped support for one's balance, the fine horses
with elegant gaits exhausted from circling have lost
their force and fallen to the earth. If I think
I'll take horses with cropped manes, they have died,
wounds covering their bodies and like ships when there is
no wind, they lie in their great numbers in a handsome pool of blood.
You who labor with the plow of your sword so that men
are stacked like hay! On the broad, savage field where
those who have come in need, stripped of joy, grieve
for there is nothing to bring away, I sang and beat out sharp rhythms
on the clear eye of my tatari drum which is like the bottom
of a rutting elephant's foot, so that I may carry home that necklace
shaped like a snake that you wear between your shoulders
big around as the concert drum of dancers, above your armlets studded with sapphires!