I know not why, I hide myself.

Why is it,

I wear my hardest grin?

When something else

Would suit me better?

When someone asks me

"What are you thinking?"

I dully say nothing.

It is not that I am embarrassed.

I don't share enough with the public,

To care about their judging gazes.

Shame;

 Perhaps?

Yet, not even my sin's banality,

Is enough,

To make them strange.

You will say that I am timid,

But every day I mount a stage,

And play my insipid John Smith part.

I repeat my lines:

"How are you?"

"I'm fine."

Without stage fright or art.

No,

No,

No.

It's because I'm a selfish creature,

I give a little,

Sometimes not amounting to but a token.

I'll bum you a cigarette for smoking,

Tell you the time

(But not give you mine).

It's true I take a little,

And on the great ledger of life,

It doesn't amount

To anything.