Tinai: Potuviyal (general heroism)
Thurai: Kaiyarunilak
Though it is so immense, does my grief nonetheless have
its limits, since it is not fierce enough to finish with my life?
On the salty earth all overgrown with sedge, on the burning ground,
my wife has gone her way to the other world, her bed
the shining fire of the pyre whose wood yields its glow
of blazing fuel ! and I am
still alive! What kind of place is this world?
- The song of Ceraman Kotampalattut Tunciya Maakottai when his wife Perunkoppentu had died
Extracted from ‘An Anthology of Poems from classical Tamil: The Purananuru’ translated and edited by George L Hart and Hank Heifetz.