Some stranger leaves me. Soon I'll be alone.
Which one will choose me when this one is gone?
I look for eyes I know. Each stranger's face
Appals me, knocks me back to memories:
Which one will choose me when this one is gone?
I hated nights when I was five, I'd shun
The changing surfaces of sheets and socks,
Calling their wrinkles monsters out of books,
Dragons and pterodactyls, octopi,
And names the family refused to say.
Old adolescent knows his younger half,
Silent when only talking is relief.
As gossip's chessmen stumble around the gin
To use the mind's blind eye for their spittoon!
"The gifts of God must be too numberless,
"Too good to notice and too close to please."