By No Means Native by Adrienne Rich Lyrics

"Yonder," they told him, things are not the same."
He found it understated when he came.
His tongue, in hopes to find itself 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, its 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.