ASIAN 226: Poetries of Asia

Tamil sangam poetry (translations by A.K. Ramanujan)

What She Said

Bigger than earth, certainly,
higher than the sky,
more unfathomable than the waters
is this love for this man		
			of the mountain slopes
			where bees make rich honey
			from the flowers of the kuriqci
			that has such black stalks.		
								
				Te:vakulatta:r (Kuruntokai 3)

What the Passers-By Said

This bowman has a warrior's band
on his ankle;
the girl with the bracelets on her arm
has a virgin's anklets
on her tender feet.

	They look like good people.

In these places
the winds beat upon the va:kai trees
and make the white seedpods rattle
like drums for acrobats
dancing on the tightropes.

Poor things, who could they be?
and what makes them walk
with all the others
through these desert ways
so filled with bamboos?					
				Perumpatumana:r (Kuruntokai 7)


What She Said

It looks as if the summer's glowing
new blossom on the dark neem tree
will not stay for his coming.

These cruel women's tongues
are working on me,
now that he is gone,
grinding me to paste
like the one fig
of the white tree rising by the waterside,
trampled on by seven ravenous crabs.		
					Paranar (Kuruntokai 24)

What the Concubine Said

You know he comes from
where the fresh-water sharks in the pools
catch with their mouths
the mangoes as they fall, ripe
from the trees on the edge of the field.

At our place
he talked big.

	Now back in his own,
when others raise their hands
and feet,
he will raise his too:

like a doll 
in a mirror
he will shadow every last wish
of his son's dear mother.		

				A:lankuti Vankana:r (Kuruntokai 8)


What She Said

On his hills,
	the ma:nai creeper that usually sprawls
	on large round stones
	sometimes takes to a sleeping elephant.

At parting,
	his arms twined with mine
	he gave me inviolable guarantees
	that he would live in my heart
	without parting.

Friends, why do you think 
	that is any reason for grieving?		

					Paranar (Kuruntokai 36)


What Her Girl-Friend Said

O long white moonlight,
you do him no good at all
as he comes stealing
through the night in the forest

where the black-stemmed ve:nkai
drops its flowers
on the round stones
and makes them look 
like tiger cubs
in the half-light!	
				Netuvennilavina:r (Kuruntokai 47)


What Her Friend Said to Him

Even if passion should pass,
	O man of the hills
	where
		after the long tempestuous rains
		of night
	the morning's waterfalls
	make music in the caverns,
would our love also pass
with the passion?		
				Kapilar (Kuruntokai 342)


What He Said

What could my mother be
to yours? What kin is my father
to yours anyway? And how
did you and I meet ever?
		But in love our hearts are as red
earth and pouring rain:
		mingled beyond parting.			

				Cembulappeyani:ra:r (Kuruntokai 40)


What She Said

Don't they really have
in the land where he has gone
such things
as house sparrows

dense-feathered, the color of fading water lilies,
pecking at grain drying on yards,
playing with the scatter of the fine dust
of the street's manure
and living with their nestlings
in the angles of the penthouse

and miserable evenings,

and loneliness?		
				Ma:mala:tan (Kuruntokai 46)


What He Said

As a little white snake
with lovely stripes on its young body
troubles the jungle elephant
	this slip of a girl
	her teeth like sprouts of new rice
	her wrists stacked with bangles
	troubles me.					
				Catti Na:tana:r (Kuruntokai 119)


What She Said

Will he remember, friend?
Where the curve of the parrot's beak
holds a bright-lit neem
like the sharp glory
of a goldsmith's nail
threading a coin of gold 
for a new jewel,

he went across the black soil
and the cactus desert

Will he remember?		
				Allu:r Nanmullai (Kuruntokai 67)


What Her Friend Said to Her

Our man of the hills

	where the bent green bamboo springs back to the sky
	with the spring of an unleashed horse

grows thin longing for our love,
like a tethered bull in summertime,

not knowing that here we are, wasting away
for his sake.						
				Vittakutiraiya:r (Kuruntokai 74)

What He Said

Her arms have the beauty
of a gently moving bamboo.
Her eyes are full of peace.
She is faraway,
her place is not easy to reach.

My heart is frantic
with haste,
	a plowman with a single ox
	on land all wet
	and ready for seed.				
				O:re:ruravana:r (Kuruntokai 131)

What She Said

Once: if an owl hooted on the hill,
if a male ape leaped and loped
out there on the jackfruit bough in our yard
my poor heart would melt for fear. But now
	in the difficult dark of night
	nothing can stay its wandering 
	on the long sloping mountain-ways
	of his coming.				
					Kapilar (Kuruntokai 153)

What He Said

O did I not think of you?
and thinking of you,
did I not think and think again of you?
and even as I thought of you
was I not baffled
by the world's demands
that held me to my work?

O love, did I not think of you,
and think of you till I wished
I were here to sate my passion
till this flood of desire
that once wet the branch of the tall tree
would thin
till I can bend and scoop a drink of water
with my hands?					
					Auvaiya:r (Kuruntokai 99)


What She Said

Look, friend,
fear of scandal will, only thin out passion.
And if I should just give up my love
to end this dirty talk,
I will be left only with my shame.

My virgin self of which he partook
is now like a branch half broken
by an elephant,
bent, not yet fallen to the ground,
still attached to the mother tree 
by the fiber of its bark.				
				     A:lattu:rkira:r (Kuruntokai 112)


What Her Girl-Friend Said

The sands are like heaped-up moonlight.
Right next to it stands all by itself,
as if all night were crammed into it,
the cool dense shade of a flowering grove
of the black punnai.

	Our man has not come back.

	Only our brothers' fishing boats
	will return from their hunt
	of many kinds of fish.
		
				Aiyu:r Mutavan (Kuruntokai 123)


What She Says (about her friend's sympathy)

This is worse than the sleepless agony
of thinking about him, far away,
wandering long among trees
through difficult branching pathways.

This is much worse: I cannot bear to think
of my friend's grief for me,

	it's like the deaf-mute's
	when he sees at night the suffering
	of a dun cow fallen into a well.		
						
				Ku:van Maintan (Kuruntokai 224)


What She Said

Before I laughed with him
	nightly,

	the slow waves beating
	on his wide shores
	and the palmyra
	bringing forth heron-like flowers
	near the waters,

my eyes were like the lotus
my arms had the grace of the bamboo
my forehead was mistaken for the moon.

	But now...				   

		Maturai Erutta:lan Ce:ntampu:tan (Kuruntokai 226)


What Her Friend Said

Will he not really think of us
when he passes the clumps of milk-hedge
with their fragrant trunks
and hears the redlegged lizard call
to his mate
in cluckings that sound like
the highway robber's fingernail
testing the point of his iron arrow,
will he not really think of us, friend?
						
			Pa:laipa:tiya Perunkatunko: (Kuruntokai 16)


What She Said

People say, "You will have to bear it."
	Don't they know what passion is like,
	or is it that they are so strong?

As for me, if I do not see my lover
	grief drowns my heart,

	and like a streak of foam in high waters
	dashed on the rocks

	little by little I ebb
	and become nothing.	
		
			   Kalporu Cirunuraiya:r (Kuruntokai 290)

What She Said

Only the thief was there, no one else.
And if he should lie, what can I do?

	There was only 
			a thin-legged heron standing
	on legs yellow as millet stems
	and looking
			for lampreys
	in the running water
			when he took me.  

					Kapilar (Kuruntokai 25)


What Her Foster Mother Said

Let no sun burn
may trees shade the little ways on the hill
may the paths be covered with sand
may cool rain
cool the desert roads
	for that simple girl
	her face the color of the new mango leaf
	who left us
	for a man
	with the long bright spear!			
					Kaymana:r (Kuruntokai 378)


What Her Girl-Friend Said

In the seaside grove
where he drove back in his chariot
the neytal flowers are on the ground,
some of their thick petals plowed in
and their stalks broken

by the knife-edge of his wheels' golden rims
furrowing the earth.				
					O:ta Qa:ni (Kuruntokai 227)

Last update 20 Jan 2004.