Her friend remonstrates with her lover: I believed you when you said you loved her and she believed me when I repeated those words of love to her. Why do you now abandon her like this? Her friend said:
She trusted my words just as I had trusted yours.
Now she has lost that short-lived radiance
born in a secret place
under a tightly-woven canopy of jasmine branches
covered with new green buds,
and sadness is her only companion.
Look over there
it’s not so far away, our pretty little village
where the white beach, smelling of fish
and the dark swell of the ocean
meet, like night and day
and where the fronds of young palmyra trees
bend invitingly to the ground.
(81)
She said:
'Do not cry', he would say
(82)
Her friend praises the foster mother for her efforts in bringing the heroine's love affair to fruition. Her friend said;
May her food be rarest ambrosia
(83)
The heroine has eloped with her lover. Her foster monster, who failed to notice the signs of the imminent elopement, bemoans her loss. Her foster mother said:
When I tried to draw her into my embrace
(84)
Her friend said to his friend:
He is indeed the sweetest of them all
(85)
She said:
The pent-up tears well up again
(86)
The heroine is afraid that harm may befall her lover for failing to keep his oath to the God of he village not to abandon her, and prays to the God on his behalf. She said:
The God who dwells in the kadamba tree
(87)
Her friend speaks to the heroine in the lover's hearing, seemingly consenting to his coming to see her by night, but implying a refusal on account of the shame it would bring. Her friend said:
He will come at dead of night
(88)
Her friend said:
Looking like that image of a fair maiden
(89)
Her friend said:
How strange and wonderful
(90)
She scolds her herself for weakening whenever her unfaithful husband returns. She said:
If you carry on like this
(91)
She said:
As the sun drops from a broad empty sky
(92)
Her friend tries to reunite her with her unfaithful husband, treating the situation as a lovers' quarrel, and offering to act as mediator, She said:
Even if my beauty fades
(93)
She said:
These foolish jasmine buds
(94)
He said:
As for this little girl
(95)
The heroine replies angrily to her friend when she finds fault with her lover. She said:
You ask me how I shall deal with my lover
(96)
She said:
I remain here alone.
(97)
She said to her friend:
I only wish, my dear one,
(98)
He said:
I thought about her, did I not?
twining his fingers in these long tresses
which flow smoothly down my back
and curl upward at the end,
and he would dab my tear-stained eyes.
But what am I to think of him now?
The hillsmen have reaped their broad fields
of small-eared millet
and planted a second crop of field beans.
Already their fleshy stalks have put forth flowers
and the cold dew of winter lies upon the ground
yet still he has not come.
may she dwell in heaven's glory
our mother
who spoke of your lover
from the mountain county
where ripe fruit hangs
from the jack-fruit tree's every branch,
where in his house he eats his allotted part.
'Soon now, he will come', she said.
'I’m so hot and sticky ', she would say
but now I know the truth
It was the lingering fragrance
of the venkai and kantal blossoms
which grow upon Mount Potiyam
over whose high peak the clouds meekly crawl
where King Ay, clad in whirling armlets, rules
that caused such revulsion in her.
How will she fare now
she who is as fragile as a water-lily?
the most devoted of lovers,
your young lord of those fertile lands
where the male house-sparrow
plucks the odourless white flowers of the sugar-cane
whose succulent stems are filled with sweetness
and brings them in his sprightly hopping gait
to build a nest where his mate, heavy with eggs,
can safely raise her brood.
Yes, the most devoted of lovers
or at least, that is what his friend’s words
would have us believe.
and flood my reddened eyes
as I lie here lonely and desolate
with my suffering which is so hard to bear.
In the depths of a winter night
with a chill wind spitting drops of rain
a cow tosses her head
snapping at a fly
and I hear the tinkling
of the bell around her neck
empty and meaningless.
Is there anyone else here to console me?
in the village meeting-place
is ancient and terrible,
so they say, who know.
But he is no villain,
my lover from the mountain country.
This brow has grown pale
only through my desire for him
and these wide soft shoulders
have grown thin
simply from the outpouring of love.
over those slopes, so hard to reach,
your lover from the land
where silver streams
roar down from lofty peaks,
where a great bull elephant
with his massive head and tiny eyes
does battle with the powerful tiger
till his ancient strength weakens and fails,
and will we feel the shame of this wickedness -
Not a bit of it.
inscribed upon the western slopes of Mount Kolli
by the dark-eyed God
who struck fear into the heart
of the heavily bejewelled Ceran King,
she sang her song of love out loud
line after line
as she hulled the rice.
What harm it could do
to this foolish little town, I know not,
but her song has certainly
got the neighbours gossiping
about this sweet little girl.
that love has made your shoulders thin and hollow
yet in your noble heart
it has brought forth only calmness and strength.
Such is your devotion
to your lover from the mountain country
where the slopes are covered with ripe peppers
and where
at dead of night
when the clouds rumble
and the rain falls in sheets
a male monkey
his coat dense and bristling
brushes against a ripe jack-fruit
with it intense flower like perfume
and sends it splashing down
into a swollen torrent
which carries it swiftly
down to the lowlands’ spreading shallows.
playing the good wife
to your husband from the land of cool shallows
where the striped fruit of the pirambu
ripens and drops
from a tangle of vines
into the deep tank
to be gobbled up by carp,
your heart will endure much sorrow,
and, like a little village at night
caught up in the bloody battle lines of Lord Anci
with his fierce bull elephants
and fine chariots,
he whose powerful hand
is unstinting like the rain,
many indeed will be your sleepless nights.
birds, flying on curving wings,
touch my heart
as they bring food for their hungry brood
hurrying along airy pathways
to their homes
in the lofty tops of kadambu trees.
and sweet life itself ebbs away,
do not shame me
by speaking to him.
I respect him like a mother or father,
do it not?
But how can I act as a slighted lover
when he no longer loves me?
have turned bright red
before the rainy season has even begun.
But my only doubt, my friend,
is as to what he will do,
he who left me
and remains out there, all alone,
at dead of night,
when he hears the rumble
of the great black thunderheads
which send fresh torrents
bouncing down the steep hillsides.
with full shoulders,
a daughter of the hillsmen
who live in little huts
amid flower spangled meadows
where pure crystal streams
rush down from high peaks
and rumble in the mountain caverns,
her charms, like water
have quite extinguished
my spirit's fire.
from the mountain country
where streams run through the venkai trees.
Well, unless I take that as a joke
my fair-browed friend
I won't know what to think of you.
My womanly virtue,
I left in a grove by the seashore,
keeping only this constant pain.
My lover is at home in his village.
As for my secret love,
it is the subject of unkind gossip
in the village street.
that there were someone
who might take a handful
of the sickly coloured flowers
of these gourd plants
whose tendrils twine
over the bright green grass
of our waterlogged yard,
and, going up close to him,
might whisper:
'This is now the colour
of your lover’s fair brow.'
And thinking of her
imagined her, did I not?
over and over
until, as is the world's way,
I became intoxicated with love
which is like a great flood,
swelling to reach the highest branches
then spreading out and subsiding at last,
and returned
that it might meet its final consummation.