Salute the Sculptors

Searched your footsteps on sandy beach,
fingertips on stones you carved
but could hear the whispers of the bulls
telling the tales of your artistic hands
that could write on stones the poems
I read.

Your vastness I imagined
Saw your signatures on chariots and elephants
spreading across
the lands and oceans
calling the people through years
showcasing your gifts
to us and generations.

Heard the pangs of the stones,
their long waitings with sighs and longings
for your
soft touch and humming with chisel,
perseverance and passions to excel
to make the flowers blossom on sands
and the sea emotes to sing your songs
forever and ever,
to make us hear
as if you are standing there.

Felt in morning mist
as if you touched last night the stones
with your sweat-soaked hands;
Saw you in mystic darks
as if lying along
Mahavali in slumber
to get up one day to repair
the worn outs,
to rededicate it for ages
to come and live
among and make us learn
what should we garner
in this long run!

Salute the sculptors -
the pious and the humbles
preferred to humility being anonymous.
Oh! salute you the great sculptors.

Hrushikesha Mohanty

On visiting Mahavalipuram on 26^th January 2009.