Adrienne Rich - By No Means Native lyrics

"Yonder, " they told him
Things are not the same"
He found it understated when he came
His tongue, in hopes to find it'self at home
Caught up the twist of every idiom
He learned the accent and the turn of phrase
Studied like Latin texts the local ways
He tasted till his palate knew their shape
The country's proudest bean
It's master grape
He never talked of fields remembered green
Or seasons in his land of origin

And still he felt there
Lay a bridgeless space
Between himself and natives of the place
Their laughter came when his had long abated
He struggled in allusions never stated
The truth at last cried out to be confessed:
He must remain eternally a guest
Never to wear the birthmark of their ways
He could be studying native all his days
And die a kind of minor alien still
He might deceive himself by force of will
Feel all the sentiments and give the sign
Yet never overstep that tenuous line

What else then? Wear the old identity
The mark of other birth, and when you die
Die as an exile? It has done for some
Others surrender, book their passage home
Only to seek their exile soon again
No greater strangers that their countrymen
Yet man will have his bondage to some place
If not, he seeks an Order, or a race
Some join the Masons, some
Embrace the Church
And if they do it does not matter much

As for himself, he joined the band of those
Who pick their fruit no
Matter where it grows
And learn to like it sweet or like it sour
Depending on the orchard or the hour
By no means a native, yet somewhat in love
With things a native is enamored of -
Except the sense of being held and owned
By one ancestral patch of local ground