The Hebrides

To me the Hebrides had been fashioned
From songs I learnt as a girl:
Short, repetitive tunes,
Lilting with the sorrow of the sea
And of their Gaelic tongue,
Singing of love, the skerries
And the peat fire flame.

Now I have seen them.
The Hebrides lie flat, riddled
By melancholy waters,
Birdless, treeless, and manless.
Lewis is all peat and bog and stones.
Harris is all stones and bog and peat.
From meagre strips of land,
With a few sheep, some hens, a single cow,
The crofters wring some sort of life.
Out of this wilderness.
How could they sing those songs?