The Stranger

from The Stranger

Once there was a stranger, who walked the streets alone,
not knowing any faces, not knowing any home.
The stranger saw the world outside that did not lie within,
yet the stranger looked so normal that no one noticed him.

The stranger saw the world outside inhabited by creatures
whose ways he could not understand; their attitudes and features
seemed to him a strange affair, so vague and dark and grim,
yet the stranger looked so normal that no one noticed him.

The stranger, he condemned these things as hideous and obscene
but in his heart there burned confusion, like a frightening dream.
He thought I surely can’t be part of this great monstrous thing?
Yet the stranger looked so normal that no one noticed him.