Surprise! Surprise!

Talk not of loneliness, but aloneness.
Every thing is alien, everyone strange.
Regard an object closely, our own foot
named, how queer it appears as its toes flex.
Peer at it with greenhorn observation;
thus magnified, what incongruous toenails!
Or the tree outside, we pass everyday—
stand below it, stare at it flagrantly
till it becomes uncomfortable, till
its slender boughs, shyly naked beneath
those veined, pellucid leaves, stir a little.
Scrutinised, it grows unrecognisable.
Again, utterly estranged, our colleague
who talks to us on weekdays—just the way
he walks, what a peculiar, indolent
manner of walking, come to think of it;
and, lastly, that woman we love fondly,
sounded and labelled, who loves us perhaps—
look how she, while reading the newspaper,
taps her own forehead, checks her cheek, cheekbone,
nose, her martial lip, over and over,
withdrawn in concentration, unaware,
yet feels her face to affirm it’s still there.
How then can we whisper, at night, ‘My own’?
Oh how everything and everybody
are perplexed and perplexing, deeply unknown.
What surprises is that sometimes we are
not surprised, that a door clicks, half opens,
and we guessed beforehand who would enter.
Is that why we dare to cry: ‘I know Smith’?
Now who of you, suggesting I raise my head
from this page, will call my name familiarly?
You will see, as always, my eyes startled.