Continuing the Panchatantra tales in verse…
(So king Ping-a-laka settled down to hear
Dama-nak-a’s story, all about fear
And an unknown fear, as we all know
Must be faced in order for it to go)
And this dear friends is the tale we’ll hear
About the jackal and the drum he feared
A hungry jackal went in search of food
And came to a deserted battlefield
But loud strange sounds made him feel not so good
And he thought to run from the battlefield.
This story told in rhyme is a continuation of the first book of the Panchatantra, which as we know, consists of five books – Mitra-bhed: The Loss of Friends; Mitra-lābha or Mitra-samprāpti: The Gaining of Friends; Kākolūkīyam: War and Peace; Labdhapraṇāśam: Loss Of Gains; Aparīkṣitakārakaṃ: Ill-Considered Action / Rash deeds. The Monkey & The Wedge is the second of the stories contained within “Mitra-Bhed”.
So Dama-nak-a heard from Kara-tak
The story of the monkey and the wedge
How a merchant once began to build up
A temple of wood at his garden’s edge
As Wikipedia will inform you The Panchatantra (Five Principles’) is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. What I am attempting to do is to treat these in a modern verse format while, hopefully, retaining the original spirit of the stories. I realise this is a daunting exercise, but it is an interesting challenge for me!
Once upon a time, a long time ago
There was a kingdom in south Indi-a
King Amar-a-sakti ruled it, you know
Mahi-la-ro-pyam of South Indi-a.
A conceit
In an electronic world is one permitted to muse upon the future of expressions such as ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’? Today, can we say, ‘the (computer) key is mightier than the sword? Or, more appropriately, the ‘chip is mightier than the missile’? Then too, with the integration of computers/electronics and warheads/missiles does a comparison exist? After all neither one can be mightier than the other when they are, in fact, the same. Or, should we, in musing, revert to what the expression originally meant, ‘that an idea expressed in words can effect more change faster and sooner and with further reaching implications than a single, short, swift death’?
I had a fractured sleep last night
No splints or plasters
Could knit it together
Thereafter the pain of it
Has left me yawning … all morning
I’m an owl not a lark
As the day proceeds
I can feel my body’s rhythms
As they pick up speed
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