Land of the albatross, land of love

Land of the albatross, land of love

Graceful albatross couple, gives birth to their innocent offspring

In a land where the sea and the wind fill the heart

Generations of albatross made these islands their home

Unaware of maps, history and the desolation of futile wars

Fruit of love, a small child with light blue eyes is born

Its first words evoke Celtic lands and language

Generation after generation, they laugh and cry together

Blind to the world, isolated in their land, they live their moment

A kiss of love, to another little person gives birth, brown its eyes

Whose first Castilian words, breathe warmth into a new continent

Immigrant stories, ancestral suffering, dreams of a future

Unaware of the sad fate others with small minds are plotting

Tresses of ebony interlace, generate a tiny being, black its eyes

Its first sounds echo a free and wild land

Original race, a land blessed by ancestors, slowly conquered

Hurt became the “new” lands, yet lands of the “old” language

It is the story of those who were here, those who came later, of those who remained

Stories of peoples, the union of cultures and dreams in small geography

The land is from nobody, the land is from everybody, it is the blending of hearts

Through respect, mutual help and shared growth, the love between peoples creates space for joy

There was a time when the albatross and other creatures lived together in harmony in the islands

There were no misunderstandings, the flight of the albatross freed all to dream

Generations, races, colours, stories, these were the fruits of a shared soil

But the horror of the war stunned all, even the albatross, who ceased his flight

Someone forced them to turn harmony into hate

Disrupted the blending of different cultures from its natural evolution

That sons would mourn their fathers, such cruel and painful bereavement

Such that to be island or continent was an insult, a symbol of separation

I would like to believe that we learnt something from the suffering

That life offers us wiser and more luminous ways

That no land justifies the death of some

And that sharing is the way to heal wounds, the way to dissolve hatred

I would like to believe that the albatross will fly again, free and enamoured

That new generations will repair the damage caused by those who knew not how to love

That the colors of the flags will blend into a rainbow of hope

That the tears of different tongues will merge in the waves of the ocean

At the end this is our longing, and without doubt we always knew it

That to honour the suffering, we need to embrace our different hues

To return to the birds their free sky and to the islands their joy

To these precious islands, land of the albatross, land of love

  

Bariloche 27th March 2012, dreaming of a future of love for the Falkland Islands

(1982-2012)

A special thanks for my dearest friend Ian Bullock (UK), one of the finest naturalists that I have encountered, who helped me in translating this poem. Ian and myself are a good example of the good friendship that can exist between a Britt and an Argentinean, sharing their love for nature and for the Islands.

Un especial agradecimiento para mi querido amigo Ian Bullock (UK), uno de los naturalistas más finos que he conocido, quien me ayudara a traducir este poema. Ian y yo somos un buen ejemplo de la hermosa amistad que puede existir entre un Británico y un Argentino, compartiendo nuestro amor por la naturaleza y por las Islas