All around town these past few weeks, I keep seeing people talking to themselves. Most of them are men. Many of them have that rheumy-eyed look that comes from too much wandering or too much wine. The eyes see things we don't see. The words are often a jagged babble.

"Metal river on a sink," one man said, standing beside a parking lot on Broadway and Grand St. "Try to tell me that. Try to tell me that. Metal river and a sink, and more, Baby, more and more and more and more."

This lost soul was a white man in his 40s, with a filthy tan ski jacket over a black T-shirt. His face was grizzled with sprouting white hairs. His hands were jammed into his pockets. He wasn't panhandling. He wasn't doing anything. Just standing there. Talking.

"Try to kid me?" he said. "Me? Try to kid me? You tryin' to kid me? You can't do it. That metal river, that sink, that river, that's a sink, Baby. See?"

Standing next to him, listening, while Christmas shoppers and office workers moved uptown and down, I understood that people talking to themselves are not really talking to themselves. They are talking to people who are not there.

"You walkin'?" said another man, wedged against the wall near the Astor Place branch of Barnes & Noble. He was black, about 50, with an NYPD wool hat and Army-issue coat. His features reminded me of John Coltrane. "You walkin'? Keep walkin', keep walkin', keep on walking, go on, go on. Walk on, woman. Walk on. Walk on by. Walk, jus' walk ..."

'Batter Up'

There was no narrative, no tale to be extracted by a curious stranger. I tried. I uttered some banalities about the cold and the season. He turned to me, his eyes blank, shook his head, retreated into private incantation.

"Out the door and down them steps. Out the door, bitch. Down them steps. ..."

At Union Square on Thursday, a gaunt white man carried a lumpy plastic garbage bag over his shoulder, like a ruined Santa Claus. He walked in diminishing circles under a leafless tree, and finally stood still.

"Batter up, batter up," he said in a sighing mutter. "First and second, you on the mound, batter up, batter up. First and second. And here's the pitch. ... First and second, batter up, batter up ..."

He paused, stared at the grass, ignored my presence. I gently asked him who was at bat. He turned to me, his eyes as dead as tombs.

"You," he said, chilling my heart.

'Ham and Eggs'

Across the street, where S. Klein used to be, a paunchy white woman with a jammed shopping cart found shelter from a damp cold wind against the wall of a subway entrance.

She was about 50, with the blurry features of a woman who must have once been a pretty teenager. Now she was wearing her own version of the burka: ankle-length polyester coat, punctured by nicks and rips, Desert boots, a scarf wrapped around her neck like a noose.

"Ham and eggs, ham and eggs, ham and eggs," she was saying. She shook the handle of the shopping cart, which was thick with old magazines, empty plastic Pepsi bottles, anonymous bundles, a lone sneaker. "Amma damma, damma amma ... Ham and eggs ..."

People talking to themselves are never really talking to themselves. Sometimes they are rehearsing words they want to say to others. Or should have said. Almost always, they are talking to people who are not there. Husbands, wives, lovers. Mothers and fathers. Old teachers. Cops. Judges. The mayor. Even terrorists.

"Try that with me, m.f.," a seething gray-bearded black man was saying, leaning against the window of Houlihan's, at the foot of the Empire State Building. "Just try it. Try flyin' that plane at me, m.f. Come on, try. Kick your m.f.-ing ass."

He looked up at the empty sky. "When you coming? I be waitin'. Try me, try me, try me." He started to laugh. "Want to blow me up? Try. Just try." Amused tourists gazed at him, and he looked from face to face. "Come on. Just try."

I tried asking the usual absurd questions about where he was on Sept. 11, and about Osama Bin Laden and the fighting in Afghanistan. His yellow eyes turned to me, but nothing registered.

"Want to fly that plane at me?" he murmured. "Just try."

On Friday night I went to mail a letter at Broadway and Walker St. The weather was cold and squally. Standing under construction rigging beside the mailbox was a midnight monologist.

White, bearded, filthy, perhaps 30, perhaps 50. A blue plastic bag at his feet, filled with cans and bottles. Up at Canal St., state troopers huddled for warmth in an improvised wooden kiosk. Twelve blocks downtown, working men gnawed at the ruins of the World Trade Center.

'Here's Daddy'

A group of young people emerged from a Christmas party at some club, giggling and happy, searching for cabs. I eased over beside the white man. Sure enough, he was talking to someone other than me.

"I didn't mean to. Swear. I didn't mean to. Swear on my mother. Didn't mean nothin' by it, Baby. You gotta believe me, gotta believe me. Swear it. Didn't mean nothin' by it, Baby."

I asked him how he was doing. He didn't hear me. His bare blonde head moved from side to side. His mustache glistened with cold rain.

"Be there in a minute," he said to the wind. "Tell Dolly, too. Tell her. Here's Daddy. Here's your daddy, Girl. Here's Daddy. Here's Daddy. That beautiful Dolly. Oh, Mama. Oh, Mama. Sorry, Mama. So sorry. Don't tell Daddy. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry ..."

The young people piled into two cabs, heading downtown, where fog shrouded the Woolworth Building.

The mumbling man didn't see them leave, didn't see me, and, feeling like an intruder, I walked home. Thinking: Maybe the emergence of these pain-ravaged solitaries was the result of Sept. 11. Most likely, they were there all along, and I was too busy with the dailiness of my own life to listen to their words.

Each was living a narrative that nobody else could penetrate, a tale of solitude filled with remorse or anger or sorrow.

As I turned the key in my door, a younger man, black, a sole flopping on a shoe, as solitary as all the others, came walking east in the middle of the rain-slick street.

"Listen, listen up, hear me?" he shouted. I paused, trying to decode these fresh words of midnight lament. "I'm talkin' to you, Girl. You hear me? Listen to me ..."

He stood still, bending in agony at the waist, then standing tall, making hip hop gestures with his hands. Car horns blared for passage. Then, he threw back his head and howled like a casualty at the fog-smeared New York moon.