Window Poem by Prabhakar Subramaniam

At the time

When girls were

Not allowed to be seen

Confined to the kitchen

And the backyard

Till they were married off

They saw the world

Only through the window

They lived in the dark

Moved in the shadows

If they had to come to the front door

They had to switch off the lights

Many hardly went out

Did not know

What it looked like

Beyond their street

Where the railway station was

What a train looked like

What it ran on

Where it went

They only knew that

It travelled

Long distances

Visited new places

And envied it for that.