“To grow up on an island”, wrote the Scottish poet Iain Crichton Smith, “is to grow up in a special world. Many of the books that I have read on the Hebrides, however, make this world appear Edenic and unreal.” Smith was born in Glasgow but brought up on the island of Lewis and spoke only Gaelic until he went to school. This, together with the central Scottish experience of exile and emigration as a result of the Highland Clearances, left many of its poets with a divided cultural inheritance – native Gaels having to write in the language of a powerful imperial oppressor. His collection Exiles (1984), in which the poem “Prospero” appeared, is full of attempts to capture the pain of forced departure, both for those having to leave and for their families: “The many ships that left our country / with white wings for Canada / they are like handkerchiefs in our memories / and the brine like tears” (“The Exiles”, translated from his own Gaelic).
But since the ones left behind have also to move on, there can never be any real return for those who leave: “let the tapestry be unfinished, as truthful fiction is” (“Next Time”). “Prospero” explores not only the pain of departure but also the disappointment of arrival. The Duke of Milan – exiled to the New World in some readings of The Tempest – is reluctant to return, in Smith’s poem, from a realm of redemption and grace to a world of “telephones … ringing with messages from the grave”. But the poem works almost as well the other way round – as a departure from an idyllic island home for a land full of promise and threat, and “a future we must all learn to accept”.
Prospero
When I left the island I thought I was dead. Nothing
stirred in me. Miranda in jeans
and totally innocent was standing by a sail
and all the others, happily recovered, talking
in suits made of brine. But to return to
the gossip, the poisonous ring, was not easy,
and many times I nearly tried to turn back
feeling in my bones the desolate hum of the headland,
my creation of rivers and mist.
Still we went on. The corruptible had put on flesh,
the young were hopeful once again, all was forgiven.
Nevertheless the waiters were scraping and bowing,
the rumours beginning, the crowns of pure crystal were sparkling
the telephones were ringing with messages from the grave
and the thin phosphorescent boys glowing with ambition
in corners of velvet and death.
Still I went on. The ship left its wake behind it
shining and fading, cord of a new birth,
and over by the sail Miranda gazed at her prince
yearning for love.
Goodbye, island, never again shall I see you,
you are part of my past. Though I may dream of you often
I know there’s a future we all must learn to accept
music working itself out in the absurd halls and the mirrors
posturings of men like birds, Art in a torrent of plates,
the sound of the North wind distant yet close
as stairs ascend from the sea.
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH (1979)
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