The streets and the very buildings are familiar.
Names of businesses come back to him haltingly,
the names of the streets, the templates of familiarity
in a vast opening up of enclosed existence
twisted in upon itself, folded in the choking embrace
of strata of compressed obscurity
like an undifferentiated morass of peat,
of coal sludge packed solid into a valley,
all perspective lost in the hidden layers
of earth, pebbles and vegetative rot
laying under the baking sun.

And then he entered the streets in their depths
and saw the faces and manners of a certain strangeness.
Those that he saw were not natives of the land
but creatures of different tribes,
bizarre individuals wandering the byways
of the familiar streets of yore.
He walked down the passages of the metropolis
and saw strange names on the street signs in barbaric tongues.
He felt that he was an interloper in the city of his remembrance,
a prodigal son in the city of strangers.