The Invisible Man Poem by Rishi Thomas

I am the invisible man
that you met beneath the highway
or beneath the yawning of a streetlamp
or was conscious of when you sensed
another eye to the conversation
that was upheld in wrong faith.
I am the encounter
you lost at the crossing
and never knew.
But I am the man you always knew
and never looked to care.

Have you look through the crack in the wall
and felt an absence that reached you out?
Have you never watched at the night
and felt it so unwanted?
Have you slept by candlelight
staring fast at the flame before it was blown out?
Have you felt the air's heaviness?
Have you drunk?

Perhaps I was at the end of that storm
you traversed through a small raft of memory
and that in silence of the calm,
you would meet me?

It is yet a late hour
and you can still listen amid the street's dark murmur
I wonder if in the morning
you won't resume your daily doings
And sometime near noon
stop and hear steps on the pavement behind you.

But sleep.
And when you wake
Do not look for me
Or hope for an appearance
For you have sucked in my dark from the hues
you had kept hidden
And have sinned against them by speaking of.

Light must still be falling before you are permitted a voice.
Light must still be falling before the unfolding of my footstep.