Once I lived in a
village without strangers.
Every path I took,
each way I went
known faces frowned or smiled,
known voices spoke,
known gestures formed
their statements on the air,
and yet there was, I knew,
a secret life
scurrying within
familiar walls,
peering out from long-known
windows, hiding
darkly where each usual
corner turned,
but now I have no
sense of this. Encountering
strangers everywhere I go,
I grow
discomfited to feel they
have no secrets
they must hide from
knowing eyes and smiles
and long-familiar usages;
they are
themselves the secrets,
and that's not the same.
Blindly, they stare and
blindly I walk on.
Robin Skelton
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/unfamiliar/
