The poetry of Nammaazhvaar

What a poetry is in Nammaalvaar!

The cricket is going on. The ball has gone past the pavillion line. The fielder picks up the ball and wants to throw it to the hands of the bowler, precise, without fail. What he does is to take an angle and throw the ball slantingly to the sky, judging precisely the falling edge of the ball onto the hand of the bowler. The ball goes into a sort of parabola, going the sky then coming down sharp to the bowler's hands.

Like this, somebody is there in the East.
That person has thrown a precious red stone, shining, Manikkam,
at an angle into a parabola to the setting west. 

OOfff...there is darkness, stark over there in the west.
This glowing red stone has hit that darkness head-on and splash,
so many spray of sparky patches over the west!
Just because of this.

Yea that is how Nammaalvaar describes the evening scene of the west.

Somebody has thrown at an angle parabolic
a manikkam to the sky
and lo ! it falls over there in the west
hitting sharp the darkness
and spraying the western horizon;
In such an evening
Oh my Manikkam!
You who have
measured the world all
My sufficing and soothing saffire!
Incomparable peerless Gold, pure !
Me, your slave,
my life, which is thine
is offering at Thy Blessed Feet !

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(Tr mine)

மாணிக்கங் கொண்டு குரங்கெறி ஒத்து
இருளோடுமுட்டி,
ஆணிப்பொன் னன்ன சுடர்படு மாலை,
உலகளந்த மாணிக்கமே!
என்மரகதமே!
மற்றொப்பாரையில்லா ஆணிப்பொன்னே,
அடியேனுடை யாவி யடைக்கலமே!
(திருவிருத்தம் 85, நம்மாழ்வார்)

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