Leaving the Island

Leaving the Island

The day windless and pale;

The hills rubbed out with mist.

Donald Angus leaves a note in English on the mantel,

Each word chiselled slow and beautiful in ink.

The dogs drowned obedient in the bay;

The men come wordless back, the hands at their sides hurt.

They help the eldest down the long steps;

She murmurs Gaelic, soft sounds that make no longer any sense.

They go onto the ship, their blue eyes flickering about them—

Out on the water, the psalm lifts—a great and rising wave.

A mainland that was out of sight

Has grown clearer and clearer,

Glints now on the horizon, made of sugar and tobacco—

Of everything that they have missed too long.

Yet this life is in the beat of the blood,

Is written in their hands sore as salt;

What can they do but climb cliffs, net birds, build stone—

They’re worthless in a world that’s made of talk.

In their language there are no words for theft or envy,

They have only songs for when the darkness falls.

In all the cobbled, concrete years to come

Their islands promise to lie at the bottom of a glass,

Or silent forever in their eyes, a story frozen

Like a fly in the amber of time.

Kenneth Steven