Ballad of a Stranger

I lightly tread in broken step
Through labyrinths of polished steel
Laid with concrete even-swept,
     In fear lest I be spied
     By some unfriendly eye.
Though I am not escaped from any cell
Or on my person toting any treasure,
I walk these streets as like the halls of Hell,
The drums of panic sounding every measure.
     I feel the eye of stranger and of foe;
     Sweet darkness, come enshroud my naked soul!

Awaiting service I nervously sit
Within a crowded restaurant
Where smoke and conversations flit
     Like spectres in a snare
     Of dank and filthy air.
I tried in vain to find a table hidden
From other diners who might watch me eat
Or read within my features the forbidden,
The frightened child beneath my brow's conceit.
     I feel the eye of stranger and of foe;
     Sweet darkness, come enshroud my naked soul!

Upon a bus-stop bench I wait
To catch the ride which takes me home.
The day is getting rather late.
     Unshaven grizzled faces
     Which gather in these places
Stir in my soul an eerie sense of dread.
The sullen, hostile gleam within their eyes
I've seen in stray dogs, gaunt and underfed,
Not long before a hapless feline dies.
     I feel the eye of stranger and of foe;
     Sweet darkness, come enshroud my naked soul!

Beside me on the bus sits down
A slim young woman in her twenties;
I look away to hide a frown.
     So friendly and well-seeming
     This lady and her being,
But if she chanced to gaze on my expression
Her smile would melt like snow in August heat,
(I always seem to make an ill impression.)
And quickly turn her gaze from my seat
     And feel my eye a stranger and a foe;
     Sweet darkness, come enshroud my naked soul!

O lady, how alone I am,
Within this city of numbered men,
Another nameless face I am,
     Another grain of sand
     Swept from the sea to land,
Then cast by ocean breezes to the winds.
I live and work and breathe this city air;
Another evening ends, a day begins.
So many hopes and loves I'd gladly share,
     But mine's the eye of stranger and of foe;
     Sweet darkness, come enshroud my naked soul!

And when I reach my home at last
Within a run-down tenement.
I make my way morosely past
     The threshold to my room,
     My self-appointed tomb,
Where, weary, I prepare myself for bed
To drown my sorrows in the folds of sleep
And muster new strength for the day ahead;
And lying down, I soon am breathing deep.
     Far from the eye of stranger and of foe;
     Sweet darkness, come and lift my naked soul!

George Chadderdon © 1994