Recognition

I stopped reading and looked up

and around the room from a corner chair.

There had been no disturbing sound 

nor sight, but a sudden feeling,

a glimpse of myself and house

in a final, fixed phase of existence.

I could see: inside and out,

a widower waking into a world

he occupied automatically,

an automaton in a slow stream of facts,

not buffeted by them,

but not making them either,

himself but one of a number of variables

a person of substance passing through 

might more or less half-notice.