Nancy Gandhi at under the fire star has a wonderful entry “Poems for the Rainy Season,” quoting several poems from Sanskrit Poetry From Vidyakara’s Treasury, translated by Daniel H. H. Ingalls; this one particularly appeals to me:
A cloth of darkness inlaid with fireflies;
flashes of lightning;
the mighty cloud mass guessed at from the roll of thunder;
a trumpeting of elephants;
an east wind scented by opening buds of ketaki,
and falling rain:
I know not how a man can bear the nights that hold all these,
when separated from his love.
The ketaki (Pandanus odoratissimus), a flowering tree called pandanus or screw pine in English, is also called kewra, kewda, keora, &c in India: “Kewra flowers have a sweet, perfumed odour that has a pleasant quality similar to rose flowers, but kewra is more fruity.”
A cloth of darkness inlaid with fireflies;
flashes of lightning;
a mighty cloud mass sensed from thunder;
elephants trumpeting;
the east wind scented by blossoming ketaki;
falling rain:
I know not how a man can bear the nights that hold all these
when separated from his love.
I thought he honored the parallel grammatical forms too much. See Ezra Pound.
I didn’t know kewra was the same as ketaki. It’s used even today, as a flavoring for puddings and such. It also figures in an interesting myth (from http://www.gurjari.net/ico/Mystica/html/brahma.htm):
“There are several reasons that Brahma is no longer worshipped… Attempting to prove his superiority, Brahma lied to Vishnu, while the ketaki flower stood false witness for him. For this, Brahma was cursed by Shiva that he would never be worshipped on earth, nor would the ketaki ever be offered in worship…”
So that’s what kewra is!