The World Outside Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

The curtains are closely drawn.
No shadowy fingers of night
reach across the lawn
to touch the room with light.

The gentle breezes pass
over carefully tended beds,
well-manicured grass
and eager early-spring buds.

Nothing in the room is stirred
by the wind’s breath, ruffled
gesture or the whisper of a word:
a world wholly muffled.

Blurred seasons of hours pass
into repeated dawns
that move across the grass
to where curtains are always drawn.