Windows On A Moonless Night Poem by Ananta Madhavan

Orange windows on a moonless night
Warm with tantalising reticence
Draw the traveller to penetrate
Wall and glass and curtains all at once,

Speculating on the mystery
Hiding drably in each home sour home.
Are their lives a horrid mimicry?
Are they liars cheating without shame,

Taken in by their own vanity,
Soft of speech but ego-hard within?
Find inside your heart if you must pry -
Orange windows in a moonless plain.

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I wrote it in January 1964, after returning by road
to Bern, Switzerland, where I was living then.