When I spoke, stiff-coated people turned away,

And I heard myself in a foolish anger shout,

But nothing changed that foreign windy day

At a street-corner of dust blown like doubt.

Faces here stare ahead. In all this throng

Nobody greets anybody, I wrote in my journal.

It is an absence, I wrote, as when a song

Steps down to silence, and in that interval

Effort stops, and pain and time and sense.

I lived there a year, waiting for it to start.

I know now that year was empty as innocence,

I, shut in my single trouble and put apart.

The back of your own right hand can rough

The skin of your own face, when you are lonely.

What if it's done with? It was more than enough.

Silent I look at the silent eyes of the lonely.