English

Purananuru 87

Enemies,
take care
when you enter
the field of battle
and face
our warrior

who is like a chariot wheel
made thoughtfully over a month
by a carpenter
who tosses off eight chariots
in a day.

Purananuru 159

My mother grumbles,

" I've lived too many days and years.
Still my life isn't coming to an end. "

She creeps about, taking little steps,
with a stick for a leg.
Her head of hair a scatter of threads,
eyes dim,
she is too old even to walk to the yard.

And my wife, her body gone sallow, is troubled
by pain and sickness;
breasts fallen,
squeezed and devoured by the many children
all about her;

Purananuru 121

Proteges will come
toward a giver
from all four directions.

It's hard to know
the true protocol
of poets,
but it's easy to give.

Consider this well,
chieftain, generous giver,

and put aside
indiscriminate views

regarding poets.

Purananuru 149

Bless you, bless you,
Nalli.

Now our minstrels
play morning pastorals
in the still drone of evening,

and in the morning
they play
on their lutes

evening's seaside songs:

all because you, in your bounty,
have taken on this business
of giving and caring,

our men
have forgotten

Patirruppattu 60

His armies love massacre,
he loves war,
yet gifts
flow from him ceaselessly.

Come, dear singers,
let's go and see him in Naravu

where, on trees
no ax can fell,
fruits ripen, unharmed
by swarms of bees,
egg-shaped, ready
for the weary traveler
in fields of steady, unfailing harvests;

Purananuru 103

Dancer!
A one-headed drum
hangs on one side of you,
a hollow drum
on the other;

your rice-bowl is turned
face down, waiting
for someone to turn it over
and fill it;

you wait on the edge
of this desert,

Purananuru 69

Dear singer:
here you are,
a lute in your hand
that knows its grammar,
a hunger in your belly
that no one heeds,
clutching at your waist
a cloth of patches
with strange threads,
damp with sweat,
on a body aimless as a ruined man's,
and your large family
dulled by poverty.

You round the whole earth
and you're here
to ask
in a small voice
for help.
So listen.

In bannered camps,

Purananuru 107

Pari! Pari! they cry,
these poets
with their good red tongues,
praising one man
in many ways:

yet it's not only Pari,

the rains too
keep the world
going
in these parts.

Akananuru 136

Serving in endless bounty
white rice and meat
cooked to a turn,
drenched in ghee,
to honored guests.

and when the bird omens were right,
at the perfect junction
of the Wagon Stars with the moon
shining in a wide soft-lit sky,

wedding site decorated, gods honored,
kettledrum and marriage drum
sounding loud the wedding beat,

the women who'd given her a bridal bath
— piercing eyes looking on, unwinking —

Kuruntokai 10

Once she was the reason for his festivals.
Now she plays Mother.

And he's from the place
of the portia tree:

plowmen bend
its flowering branches
to spray themselves
with its yellow pollen
clustered like beans.

She has made such a secret
of his cruelty,

he will soon return to her,
shamefaced, I'm sure.