As a ‘Stranger’, I have made a decision to reject and fight against this World. This makes me a deserter, an outsider, indeed, a stranger in an alien World.

Obviously, this is not an easy choice.

I am not a peaceful man, a man content and willing to accept the will of God. No, I am a man at war – with the World and with Society, but also with myself and those I love the most.

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. When I see a person i say within myself,’Who is he, and in what manner do I know him, and why is he here, and what law has joined me with him?’

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.

My thoughts are strangers to my body, and as I stand before the mirror, I see something in my face which my soul does not see, and I find in my eyes what my inner self does not find.

I am a stranger in this World; I roamed the universe from end to end, but could not find a place to rest my head; nor did I know any Human I confronted, neither an individual who would hearken to my mind.

When I open my sleepless eyes at dawn, I find myself imprisoned in a dark cave from whose ceiling hang the insects and upon whose floor crawl the vipers.

When I go out to meet the light, the shadow of my body follows me, but the shadow of my spirit precedes me and leads the way to an unknown place seeking things beyond my understandings, and grasping objects that are meaningless to me.

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

For this reason I am a stranger, and I shall remain a stranger until the white and friendly wings of death carry me home into my beautiful country. There, where light and peace and understanding abide, I will await the other strangers who will be rescued by the friendly trap of time from this narrow, dark World.

Kahlil Gibran