She speaks in her way of her savage seas <br />With unknown algae and unknown sands; <br />She prays to a formless, weightless God, <br />Aged, as if dying. <br />In our garden now so strange, <br />She has planted cactus and alien grass. <br />The desert zephyr fills her with its breath <br />And she has loved with a fierce, white passion <br />She never speaks of, for if she were to tell <br />It would be like the face of unknown stars. <br />Among us she may live for eighty years, <br />Yet always as if newly come, <br />Speaking a tongue that plants and whines <br />Only by tiny creatures understood. <br />And she will die here in our midst <br />One night of utmost suffering, <br />With only her fate as a pillow, <br />And death, silent and strang.<br /><br />Gabriela Mistral<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-stranger-la-extranjera/
