G.K. Chettur wrote poems when a few found the press, chose to express in English. A well-read man, schooled in India and abroad, he was from a family of big names. Had he lived more, he would have definitely, but he could not accomplish that. The poems which he has are of the old pattern which was prevalent then.

A temple tank solitude dotted by the herons photographed and the silence prevalent around captured, stored in for recollection forms the basis of the poem, the substance and verve of it. The poet can just see, read, but cannot imitate. How do the sunrises come upon breaking the lull of silence? How do the herons sit by? How do the sunsets retreat through? This is but a story, a picture, a reflection. He sees the birds and thinks about life, pedaling, care-free perching, furrows into the secluded terrains and water bodies. It is beautiful to see them beating wings, taking flights. When they fly, the wraps of wings with a flutter strike us, breaking the lull with the ripples surfacing on and encompassing in.

Simply, he cannot understand this solitude spread around and transmuting, so divinely-attributed, Nature-blest silence ever new, ever fresh to make us look in wonder and astonishment. How the creatures made of? How their furs, wings of silence? How do they wade through, clawed, beaked and billed and making the movement? It is but a scene to see them stalking, wading. It is a mystery of Nature whose formula is of the mysterious green and unending surface.

It is not the temple, but the temple tank where he ruminates and recollects; it is tranquility, the solitude which teaches him and makes aware of His Presence.  The poem reminds us of Wordsworth’s poems and also of Yeats’ Wild Swans at Coole. While reading the poem, the picture of Alexander Pope’s Ode on Solitude also flashes upon the mind’s plane.

Here, by this pool, where herons stand and wait,
In quietness I cannot imitate :
Where Dawn and Sunset fling with reckless hand
A bounty that I cannot understand :
Where little things of fur and claw and scale,
With careless scorn put me beyond the pale,
And the rapt silence broken by their stir
Wraps closer round the restless worshipper:

Here, to this place of wonderment and peace,
With hurried steps, impatient, ill-at-ease,
I come to shed this ceaseless strife that mars
Even the beauty of the changeless stars :
And I return, undaunted, calm, and slow.
Careless of how I move, or where I go,
With benediction of this solitude,
Not understanding God, but — understood.

The calm and quiet atmosphere of the temple tank is the place where he can recuperate and recompose himself. He loves to visit the place as this is the tract where he can shed his strife which mars it the jovial spirit of his.

In those days of yore people used to drink water from the tank. The worshippers used to bathe before worship in the temple too.