Orkney

Here is a poem I wrote when visiting Orkney in 2026 - it is dedicated to Anton and Sally:

Under the afterglow lingering from evenfall, I am standing

on 59° North and it is here that I encounter

the amorphous, ashen light anticipating lightning,

dew appearing when it is not yet due.

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

a place to rest, and I mean true rest.

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

What we now 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.

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

by our descendants as illusory and pallid, as we now view our ancestors head-on.

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.

And from this fair belvedere of catacombs, I can feel

the blowing zephyr and the nectarous scent

of heather wholly carpeting lowlands, woolly sheep, amiable 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 location to prepare us

for our battles. Let us then remain a little longer on this isle so that

we can prove our worth, and in the process quaver

with long-held emotion. No, not 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 summer bloom, our stagecraft will be put to the test, confronted

as we are with strangers from the past who care nothing for our limpid conversation.

This is where 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 setting? 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 these ancient heirlooms and what we embody? Are we not all born to live, work hard, give birth, die without ever wanting to?

It is a land so munificent that I can only remain rhapsodic, even

lachrymose in the presence of such radiance.

For today, five thousand years later, this irreality is still teeming with life. Listen,

look, feel. One day, we will also be called primaeval without being able to answer back.

In short, we ought to be a little less imperious. How ignoble to feel detached from

what was once fraught with unimaginable hardship.

Yes, the outlander voices of those original inhabitants were dispersed by the wind and left little trace. But then ours will too, when the time comes.

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

And as we amount to little more than dustmotes, we must admire it all with kindness,

even the most prosaic waves breaking on this landlocked vastity, dauntless

and dreambound, surrounded by cyclonic outbursts and lit 

by a counterglow that we know not 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, such aeolian and paradisian dunes presage a chasmic encounter with what we

represent -as deafening a sound as this Northern Sea clashing with the steepest cliffs.

And it is then that we recall the land we left behind, no more than a brutalist backdrop since 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 ardently

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

© isabeldelrio2026