The Strangers

The Strangers

We rise, together, for once as one
till waning light divides, markedly
Us, standing, outlined by sun,
Them, woven and shadowed darkly
on walls marred, like echoes flung
down hollow falls of rock starkly

We walk as around they surge,
our footprints neither hint
at what our choices were
nor show that paths picked bid
our passengers to diverge
and wander down roads we didn’t.

We live with they about us darting,
by our fancied wonderings blown,
until by way of all our partings
we move about in frightening cones
of shadows frayed, from us, their starting
and each we think ourselves alone

We wander on in frenzied pace
until we ache from bodies gaunt-ed
and slowly in our fall from grace
we gain the growing sense that flaunted
ways and dismissed days like waste
have made our faces haunted

We thrash against our death-bed-thirst
and then are stilled by life’s last blow
as, over us looming, we see at first
them blooming still by words we sow,
numbers swelling since our birth,
the Strangers, dooming, using eyes we know