Orkney

A poem I wrote when visiting Orkney in 2026:

Yes, it is 59° North where I am standing, under the afterglow

lingering from evenfall, and it is here that I encounter

the amorphous, ashen light anticipating lightning,

dew appearing when it is not yet due.

With our tendency to hyperbole, we the havenless need to find

a place to rest, and I mean really rest.

All around us, the sea (a glutinous mound) and this green land (like gates of horn), both forgivingly far away from our madding progress, if you can call it that.

What we have is not what they, those frostbound and enchorial ancients bearing

a single forename, would have desired, no.

Because we, with our inimitable flamboyance, unfairly consider them as nothing

but lesser renegades without one iota of our skills.

This realisation hits us like a firebolt, and it is then that we have

our epiphany: if survival is nothing but night-faring, we might just miss the sights.

Let us not forget that before long we will disappear too, only to be sensed

by our descendants as elusory and pallid, as we ourselves view these, our ancestors.

And yet from this belvedere of a mound

I can feel the blowing zephyr, the nectarous scent

of heather fully carpeting lowlands, woolly sheep, titillating ponies, enterprising bulls,

all of them escorts to weighty rains anticipated though not fully materialised.

As yet unblooded we are, and this may be the finest place for our final battle, so

let us remain a little longer on these islands, for they could be the place

where we must prove our worth, and in the process

quaver with emotion, not yet fear.

For fear does not belong in this sandscape, distress cannot

be found here. There is no netherworld but perchance a seaborne rapture of sorts.

And in this full bloom, our stagecraft will be put to the test, confronted as we

are with strangers from the past who care not about our limpid conversation.

For it is here that we encounter our future spectrality joining forces

with our past provenance. It is all one, it is all the same, we are all the same.

So why did we make our way to this remote

and melancholic place? Was it to pulchrify our surroundings and, hence, ourselves?

Could it be that, in that necropolis of past beings, we came to find

our redolent fortune, even our calling?

What difference is there between the ancient heirlooms and ourselves? Are we not all born to live, work hard, give birth, die without ever wanting to?

Yet this land is munificent, and I can only remain rhapsodic, even

lachrymose in the presence of such radiance.

Today, five thousand years later, the irreality of it all is still alive, because one day

we will also be called primeval without being able to answer back.

Ans so, we ought to be a little less imperious. How ignoble to feel detached

from what was once fraught with the detritus of unimaginable hardship.

And if the original inhabitants were to speak once more, their outlander voices would be dispersed by the wind and leave no trace, as ours will be when the time comes.

We are here for now, poised on these Norse edgelands between wasteland and wilderness, where every rock and every grain of sand are nothing but memoried.

And as we are not much more than dustmotes, we must openly admire even the most prosaic waves breaking on this landlocked vastity, dauntless

and dreambound, surrounded by cyclonic outbursts and lit 

by a counterglow that we ignore whence it comes.

So, no conundrums anymore, please: in this bravest of lands, it is finally clear

that our simpering destiny is not so much our fate as our choice.

You see, these aeolian and paradisian dunes presage a chasmic encounter with ourselves -a mere caprice between heaven and earth-

and the land we left behind is no more than a brutalist backdrop as

we, too, will be cadaverous soon enough. 

And though blinkered, we must revel in this greenscape

without lamentation or augury, for a new paradigm 

is now decided: to embrace this idyllic life so fervently 

that we can take it back with us in our hearts.

© isabeldelrio2026