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Then, as she was speaking, Jatayus
appeared and said, like the thunder, ‘You!
Where are you going? Where are you
going? Stop! Stop!’ The flames
of his anger spreading through his eyes,
his heroic beak shining like lightning,
his body like huge, golden
Mount Meru coming through the sky.
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His two wings beat the air
as when a world ends, and the fierce wind
blows through the entire universe,
uprooting all the broad, strong mountains
till they rise in the sky and smash
one another to dust falling,
and the sea, swelling, surges up to be one
with the earth and both are destroyed.
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Trees with strong leafy tops curved down awhile
the clouds above soared high in the sky to avoid him.
‘Up there! The great cruel Garuda is coming!’ the cobras
thought, shrunk their hoods, skulked off and were deeply troubled.
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Elephants and yalis and every other sort of animal,
great trees from the forest and bushes and rocks
were torn away by the wind from his two wings
and sent soaring so that the sky seemed like the forest.
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‘Where are you going? Where are you taking the wife
of the highest on your towering chariot along with
part of the earth? No I will cover the sky, all the directions!’
said he whose nature was to spread his protective wings.
Translated from the Tamil by George L. Hart and Hank Heifetz