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Petroglyphs scattered
All over Hawaii
Carved on black volcanic rocks
Mysterious they are
Stoke human curiosity
Unendingly
Human and other forms
Numbers and writings
Carved by the island’s ancient natives
Long before the Whites entered the scene
No one can gauge
What they truly meant
We are left with guesses and conjectures
Lots of touristic balderdash
Me, a frail, wavering human frame
At late seventies
Walked across the blackness
On cracked volcanic lava rocks
Defying winds and sun
The past bloomed
In different forms
Carved on solidified lava
A human form here
Elsewhere a human thought
In an unknown alphabet
Or a secret number or sign
Splendorous indeed
Are the stone writings
Showcased across the island
A tourist’s paradise
They dragged me back to my teenage
When I climbed a rocky peak
Close to my village home
Laboured hard on its head
And chiselled my name
Alongside my heartthrob’s
My name and hers
Set apart by a heart
Pierced by an arrow
In the middle
Sweet, bleeding, passionate
Perhaps, the monsoon rains,
Winds and sunshine
Have undone my petroglyph
What else can I expect
In more than sixty years
Of my residence elsewhere
Away from my native nest
How much I wish
I could again climb that peak
To view my sweetest script
On its unthinking pate
Alas! Am now close to eighty
Can’t climb that height
To view it again
And sing to my past youthful glory
Stars and planets!
Look at it please
Read it aloud to me
The song of my youth
Engraved on the rock
The whole sky will join in
In full-throated revelry
The universe has no choice
Glory all the way petroglyphs
Wherever you are
On the surface of this earth!
Image Copyright - Madathil Rajendran Nair |
