LOUD MESSENGER

Translated from the Sanskrit Meghaduta by Franklin and Eleanor Edgerton, this offers the Western reader a work of India's greatest lyric poet, who lived in the fourth or fifth century A.D. The 110 four-line stanzas of the original are kept, with an effort to run each line about seventeen syllables--but, say the translators, the Sanskrit meter is impossible to retain in translation. The poem itself is a love lament, its burden a message of yearning sent from a husband ?anished to the hermit groves of Rama's Mount to his wife afar, through the good uspices of a cloud. The poetry is rich, controlled, erotic and reads well in translation. The original Sanskrit follows the translation for those with knowledge or curiosity to attend.