Time's chain of untraceable accidents
wanted it to wear white.
The young ones still don't come down at night
but stay aloft on an updraught,
resting on outstretched wings all day.
The flight over the ocean
its natural berth;
and the line between sea and sky
must be the closest the mind can imagine
in finding balance.
No sigh from an earth in constant flux
reaches its ear in the air.
Still the globe appears immutably
blue, green, and silent as the sphere it encircles.
The white bird
has been created for a life raised above the surface
and the sucking depths.
When it comes to the island
it lands on a special selected skerry
We are linked
down here to the cliff.
The one up there with its black gaze
full of wind and space;
and the white garb
that spreads out in the world's largest wingspread,
when it hurls itself out into the sky
further and further from our Alcatraz.

Translated by Verne Moberg