Outsider by James Berry

This poem emphasise the speaker's isolation and dislocation. Each stanza finds the Outsider "lost" in different locations, perhaps reflecting the different, miserable stages of attempted integration: "busy streets", "neglected woods", "forbidding wastelands", "long footpaths", "sparse room".

Outsider

If you see me lost on busy streets,my dazzle is sun-stain of skin,I'm not naked with dark glasses onsaying barren ground has no oasis:it's that cracked up by extremesI must hold selftogether with extreme pride.

If you see me lost in neglectedwoods, I'm no thief eyeing treesto plunder their stabilityor a moaner shouting at air:it's that voices in me rulefirmer than my skills, and sometimesamong men my stubborn hurtsleave me like wild dogs.

If you see me lost on forbiddingwastelands, watching dry flowersnod, or scraping a tunnelin mountain rocks, I don't opena trail back into time:it's that a monotonylike the Sahara seals my enchantment.

If you see me lost on longfootpaths, I don't set trapsor map out arable acres:it's that I must exhaust twigslike limbs with water divining.

If you see me lost in my sparseroom, I don't ruminateon prisoners and falsify their jokes, and go on aboutprisons having been perfectedlike a common smokescreen of mind:it's that I movedmy circle from ruinsand I search to remake it whole.