Blocking Off The Light Poem by Rukmini Bhaya Nair

They have built a room next door
Where last week was only veranda

So when the watchman's cane at four a.m.
Smashes up my sleep, and morning rises

Ghostly, from the other end of the world

I try to imagine, as is only natural
The shuttered beginnings of life

Before the emergence into woman's sex
Filling up what used to be open space

Now an airless veranda, hung about
With purdahs, blocking off the light

Being blocked off from the light.