I thought that you pronounced the "t"

A man was sunning in the sea.
He took a life that wasn’t free,
but he wasn’t really sorry, though he died.

I thought that he was just like me.
I thought his eyes like mine did gleam.
It was years before I could pronounce his name.

I heard his voice in summers there,
his arguments beyond compare
as I walked in squares and slashed up blades of grass.

I read it inside of Bibles, too,
on Sunday mornings in a room
where I was forced to waste away my day.

A lover asked me long ago
about the title, did I know
the meaning hidden in those foreign words?

I told her that I was unsure,
but I thought the subject was a cure
for the plagues that drain us on each passing day.

It may have been the man he killed,
or monstrous sounds from windowsills,
and some people think the answer is a god

or the mother he had never known,
or the woman's hopes from which he’d flown,
or the way that he had always felt alone;

But l’etranger, it is you and I
and we find out after we die
that there really wasn’t any other thing.