The Outer Hebrides. Hebridean Symphony

 

I still love this poem by Eva Ström.

This is my English version which appeared in Swedish Reflections and Reading the signs.

The Outer Hebrides (from the Swedish of Eva Ström)

 

 If it’s the case that you long for the Outer Hebrides

or somewhere else, where you have the sea in front of you

and Europe behind you

and where the islands are only a thin film of rain . . .

If it’s the case, that you’re yearning for these islands

or other islands, of comparable unimportance . . .

If it’s the case that you’re worn out with writing Encyclopaedias

and reading them from A to Z . . .

If you’ve absorbed all the knowledge that there is to be acquired

about the Jarrah forests and the Druids,

about Tantalus on to the Tatras . . .

And if it’s the case that the azaleas are fading

that their swollen pink petals have already dried

and dropped to the ground

and nothing is left of their hardiness,

their relationship to Ericacea, the heather on the moor —

hot-house flower, green-house flower . . .

If it’s the case that you sense inside you the end is coming,

like a crack, or an idea emerging . . .

If it’s the case that you long to be changed while you travel,

just as unripe fruit is changed as it travels

in the cargo-hold, beneath the Southern Cross,

a hull’s-width away from the water . . .

If that’s the case and there’s no other option —

if that’s how it is —

you’ve already turned off the lights in the house:

you’re on your way.

 

I've only recently discovered Granville Bantock's Hebridean Symphony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2dfj45wSYU

When travel is permitted, I'll be on my way!