O Megh, let us compare: Your lightning
With Alaka's radiant women, your rainbow
With royal paintings, your thunder with mridangam,
Your lakes of rain with palace courtyards.
Your towers, Alaka's rooftops, meet in the sky:
You two share much in common.
 
 
 

Alakan wives wave lotuses playfully,
Kunda flowers in their hair, fresh-plucked
Kurubaka on their crowns. Lodhra pollen
Palely powders cheeks, as earlobes
Dangle shirisa: Only when you appear
Do nipa strings part their hair.
 

 
 

Alaka is ever-ever land: There all the trees
Continuously bloom as bees forever buzz them,
Lily ponds forever sprout lotuses, as endless bands
Of hamsas surround them, ever-crying peacocks
With ever-gorgeous tails salute the perpetual
Moonlit evenings, that never end in darkness.

 

 

Rich, luxurious Alaka, where the lordly Kuberans
Shed tears only of joy.
Their agonies only provoked by Kama,
Are pains quickly banished by sexual delight,
Where separation is unknown but for lovers' quarrels.
Alaka -- where there is no other age than youth.
 
 

To read the next four verse click here

To return to the Index Page click here