I am a stranger in this world,

I am a stranger in this world, and there is a severe solitude and painful lonesomeness in my exile. I am alone, but in my aloneness I contemplate an unknown and enchanting country, and this meditation fills my dreams with spectres of a great and distant land which my eyes have never seen. I am a stranger among my people and I have no friends. I am a stranger to myself, and when I hear my tongue speak, my ears wonder over my voice I see my inner self smiling, crying, braving, and fearing and my existence wonders over my substance while my soul interrogates my heart but I remain unknown, engulfed by tremendous silence.

I am a stranger in this world, and there is no one in the Universe who understands the language I speak. I walk in the deserted prairies, watching the streamlets running fast, up and up from the depths of the valley to the top of the mountain I watch the naked trees blooming and bearing fruit and shedding their leaves in one instant, and then I see the branches fall. I see the birds hovering above, singing and wailing then they stop and open their wings and turn into undraped maidens with long hair, looking at me from behind kohled and infatuated eyes, and smiling at me with full lips soaked with honey, stretching their scented hands toward me. Then they ascend and disappear from my sight like phantoms, leaving in the firmament the resounding echo of their taunts and mocking laughter.

I am a stranger in this world I am a poet who composes what life proses, and who proses what life composes.

- Kahlil Gibran