Chess

The blink from light to darkness leaves me stunned:
The slamming silence echoes in a place
Where temporary blindness warps all sense
And stifles like a groping fist of space.

The dark around me all I do is sink
Into a foetal mound upon the stone
Is this my new existence: formless, raw?
The morning’s light would show me my new home.

I never dreamed I’d wake in such a realm,
Where light and shadow chequered me a board;
The grille that shut out freedom from the sun
Had raised me from a pawn into a lord.