English

Kuruntokai 60

On the tall hill
where the short-stemmed nightshade quivers,

a squatting cripple
sights a honey hive
above,
points to the honey,
cups his hands,
and licks his fingers:

so too,
even if one's lover
doesn't love or care,
it still feels good
inside

just to see him
now and then.

Akananuru 318

Forest animals walk there
and elephants roam.
In the sky's high places
thunder rumbles.
But you come alone
in the night
along the narrow paths
of snakes and tigers,

O man of the mountain country,

that country of fruitful hills,
ancient conquests,
and wide spaces,
where the music of waterfalls
mingles with bee sounds
as drums with lute-strings.

If you wish to marry me, you can.

Ainkurunuru 201ÔÇô210

Bless you, Mother, listen.

She climbs the round garden rock
that reeks
of the meat of sacrifice,

she looks at the flowering hilltops
of his country,

and she stands there forever
in her sapphire jewels:

only in this way
will her sickness
find its remedy.

You ask me to forget him,
how can I?

His mountain,
wearing its dark raincloud
white-crested
as a bean flower
the east wind opens,

his mountain,
that blue sapphire,
is never out of sight.

Bless you, Mother, but listen.

Whenever the blue-stone hills
of his place
where the hill tribes
dig for tubers
in long pits
now filled with the new gold
of kino flowers,

whenever those blue hills
fall from sight
each evening,

her long flower-like eyes
fill with tears.

Is your crop of millet
parching?

Look, the raincloud sits
on the sapphire hills
of your man

like fat
on a cut of meat.

But look,

look at him out there

standing like a sentinel
who keeps a rain-tank from flooding,
rain-wet bright sword
hung at his side,
war anklet
twined with moss,
his striped waist-cloth
tight,
and wet with dew.

Listen.

My friend,
usually modest,
so fearful even of you, Mother,
will only sleep now
on the broad chest
of that man
from the tall hills
with their crashing white waterfalls:

and it hurts
to look at her.

Tell me:
how is it then
that women gather
like hill goddesses

and stare at me
wherever I go,
and say
" She's good, she's so good, "
and I,
no good at all for my man
from the country of the hills?

Bless you, friend. Listen.
Sweeter than milk
mixed with honey from our gardens
is the leftover water in his land,
low in the waterholes
covered with leaves
and muddied by animals.