These stone maidens turn you to stone
If you stare at them too long, in the sun.
Their bodies are badly stuck in the wall,
They lean forward in the sky of the day
Seen by creatures that are still not dust.
At night they come out of the moonlight
For hopscotch in the chalk-lines of the sky.
Then they come out in groups and dance
To nobody’s pleasure except god-husbands
Who became stardust in the sky long ago.
Their sculptor-father is a chisel’s dust,
From the father sculptor of all-time sky.
His dust is not seen by men, not yet dust.
(About the exquisite sculptures of idealized female beauty on the temple walls of Ramappa Gudi ,near Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh)
