Category: Portfolio – Poetry

by Ian Gualtiere ’27 on February 5, 2026

May the angels light our way tonight
on such a desolate island. Where seals
swim up the harbor mouth, birds take flight,
and sheep roam in octaves on green fields.
Boats offshore watch not us, but waves
that slap their sterns in a prolonged rock.
We’re left to the hills and stones, and caves
that fall darker and deeper than the loch.
No film nor image can capture the land;
a fertile moonscape that can subtly bloom
single houses, which have sunk into sand.
Names remain only on the slabs of doom
that remind us of these nights, where cruel 
wind and water take no prayers in the rain.
Souls of our fathers hold an everlasting duel,
and our mothers hold their breaths from pain.
Sleeping a century later, this island holds
the remains of a generation that is lost.
Broken chimneys and windows have told
any passer that the sea around has a cost.