English

Kuruntokai 9

Tan like young mango leaf,
she plays Mother now.

Unworn blossom
shut away
all by itself in a pretty jar,
her body wilts.

Her man is from the cold seashore
where

blue lilies
rise on cane stalks
above green lily pads
in the black backwaters
with shoals of fish,

and, when it floods,

Kuruntokai 127

Dear man from the city
of portia trees and rice fields
where

the small barbus fish
slips sometimes
from the heron's beak
and dives into the water
but fears ever after
the white bud of the lotus,

since one of your minstrels
was a liar,
all your minstrels must seem liars
to the women you abandon.

Akananuru 16

His palms spotless
as the petal
at the pollen center
of lotuses
that grow in old waters
where otters play,

his mouth lovely as coral,
making sweet baby talk
not yet uttered by tongue,
he makes everyone laugh.

Enchanting everyone,
he was playing alone in the street
with his toy chariot,
our son wearing gold ornaments —

when that woman of yours,
burdened with gold,
teeth sharp and lovely,

Kuruntokai 370

In lily ponds, the plump colorful buds
are forced open by bumblebees
on his cool seashore.
I sit with him,
we are two bodies.

We lie together,
we are close
as fingers around a bow.

He goes home,
I too am left
with a single body.

Kuruntokai 203

He's not from some country
beyond the hills,
or from a town so far
you can't see the trees.

He lives so near
I can't help but see him:
yet he acts distant,
like some holy sect
close only to a god.

There was a time when I
was close to him.

Ainkurunuru 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29

In his fields, mother,

rain beats down,
sentinels watch.

Yet crabs cut down
the fresh white seedling.

She has lain long enough
on his chest,
her mound of love
is spotted:

why does your daughter
still grieve,

grow sallow?

Kuruntokai 231

Though he lives in the same town
he won't come into my street
and if he comes into my street
he'll not come near and hold me close.

He walks by, unseeing,
as if past the cremation grounds
of strangers,
and so my love,
once unashamed and senseless,
has fallen far away
like an arrow shot from a bow.

Ainkurunuru 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20

Green creepers planted inside the house
twine themselves with the cane outside
in his country of rivers.

Embarrassed
by his careless cruel ways, we say,
" He's a good man, "

but my round soft arms
say, " Not so, he's not, "
and grow thin.

Like the high fanning tufts on swift horses
grows the white blossom of the cane
in his country of cool rivers.

And his women,
O they know nothing of sleep
even in the cosy small houses
of that sleepy town.

Narrinai 174

" From the long fronds
of a deserted talipot tree
with clusters thick and hard
like an old date-palm's,

a male bird calls to its mate,
and the listening tiger
roars in echo

on those difficult roads
where hot winds blow —

but then your lover who went there
has returned,
has hugged you sweetly ever since
and you've lain together
inseparably
in one place,

and yet
why do you look like a ruin,