I once drove to the end of the world
Pulled up in my landrover at the cliff top
Two curious kittens for company
Above Fisterra – ‘World’s End’ in ancient Gallego –
The fishing village crouched in underneath
Hiding from Atlantic storms in this
The wettest wind-blown corner of the continent
But this still summer night
The wind and rain have died
I make a fire – dried heather cracks and flares
The lamb chops sizzle and spit
The kittens tiptoe toward the light
Wrinkling their expectant noses
From the crow’s nest dark, I look down
Like a Peeping Tom, and listen to clear voices
Neighbours parting with a good night
Roosting mothers calling their brood in to sleep
And I ponder a life in this snug outpost
With no need for another lost outsider
Shipwrecked on the Costa da Morte
A lighthouse keeper longing and unsure
Whether and what he’s seeking
Maybe running from himself –
Too far out to commute to Compostela
My half-baked Castillian Spanish of little use
In a community glued together by a Celtic tongue –
That resonates and tugs
They say, almost within living memory
Fishermen launched from this port communed at sea
With men home-based in Quimper, Cork, the Isles of Scilly
Fisterra – for centuries the end of the known world
And still the end for the pilgrims
The 500 mile Camino de Santiago
In unbroken use for thirteen hundred years –
From here they still throw
Their worn out boots into the setting Sun –
They say it’s not the journey there that teaches you
It’s the journey home again.
