English

Kuruntokai 86

Are there others too
with held-back tears
breaking out
from eyes streaked with red,
sick for love, lonely, confused,

who hear,

through the big rain
blown about by the wind
at midnight in the cold month

when the oxen
shake off the buzzing flies
again and again,

the poor thin chime
of clappers
in the crooked cowbells?

Akananuru 354

In encampments,

powerful elephants have fought the war,
the thunder of drums
resounds on the battleground,
the king has raised his victory banners.

Herds of cows and calves
come leaping into the forest
as herdsmen raise flutes
to their lips.

Your henchmen go rushing ahead,
the charioteer reins hard
to keep on the path
the fast-paced steeds with flying manes,

and when you return, my lord,

wounds praised by poets,

Kuruntokai 118

Bird and beast
melancholy;
evening
a pitiless monotone.

As they shut the gates
through which men
of all kinds
enter,

the watchmen call out:

Anyone else,
anyone else
to come?

Friend, only my lover
will not come.

Kuruntokai 66

These fat cassia trees
are gullible:

the season of rains
that he spoke of
when he went through the stones
of the desert
is not yet here

though these trees
mistaking the untimely rains
have put out
long arrangements of flowers
on their twigs

as if for a proper monsoon.

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.

Kuruntokai 234

Only the dim-witted say it's evening
when the sun goes down
and the sky reddens,
when misery deepens,
and the mullai begins to bloom
in the dusk.

But even when the tufted cock
calls in the long city
and the long night
breaks into dawn,
it is evening:
even noon
is evening,
to one who has no one.

Kuruntokai 325

When he said,
" I'll go! I'll go! "
I thought he was playing
at going, as usual,
and said,
" Go then,
leave me alone! "

Where is he now,
protective as a father,
O where?

The place between my breasts
is filled with tears,

a pool where
black-legged white heron

Narrinai 311

If it rains,
our town grows rich.
Ears of grain
cluster on the paddy grass
maned like horses.

When it's dry,
thorn bushes rise by the black waters,
the mud is parched.
But the dark shallows
yield a harvest of white salt.

Full of old ceremony,

Kuruntokai 228

In his country of cool seas, they say,

on the screwpines with hanging roots
fat buds unfold
in leaves
like the wingfeathers
herons preen with their beaks,

and on the front yards
of his little seaside town
set in a grove,
the long waves come and go.

Though he has left
he is close to my heart,
living far away

in his country of cool seas.

Narrinai 4

The fishermen who go
from the little town in the seaside groves
into the sea
wait in the thick shade of the blue laurel tree,
looking for the right time
to enter the cold wide waters,
spreading and drying meanwhile their nets
with many eyes and knots,

in the seaside of my man.

If only someone would go to him
and tell him,
" If Mother should ever hear
the scandal about us, it would be hard for me
to live here, "