The blue printer of the sky drops
down the black tick marks of the birds.
Scanned by the sun’s laser beam
in stringent discipline,

the juxtaposed banana farms set
upon the fecund ground by prompt hands
that know the measure of toil
culminate in front of the scarecrow

whose domed skull is sculpted
by the sun’s concentration. Its eye sockets
glow like electric bulbs in the noon.
Goats goaded by thirst scamper away

from the fields to the metal-snouted
pump from whose vantage point
the three parallel mud-caked roads
that lead you into Ontimitta village can be observed.

Self-contained; it has a squat post office
on whose roofs the cranes stand in stolid thought
and a red-bricked school which learns its lessons
below the solid shade of the banyan trees

pregnant with the knowledge of sacrifice
swinging from whose bearded rope-like stems
you can leapfrog straight into the courtyard
of the Kodandarama temple

whose remarkable corbels crush ‘style’ into dust.
The verisimilitude of Vontudu and Mittudu stuns you
and the exclamations of the sacred colonnades
dazzle you with their terrific engravings.