If a poem arises it is because the silence around it has started to speak
A long way from here someone is drawing a door in the sand
In a country’s imagination there are those
Trapped underground even in their desperation they cannot appear to us
In that same country if you look for them
There are those too troubled they are afraid to speak
The same for silence when it wants to speak
The easiest thing for it to do is that it finds for itself a personal tragedy
There are no easy or comfortable tragedies the same and same again
With the same there are no easy tragedies
Silence in the care of silence what can it do what
Can it do but that it shouts to those trapped underground
Even louder at the herds of animals passing through
A passing that seems to care nothing
It’s slight enough that they hear nothing of our deafening sounds
The invading armies despite themselves and those with ears
That they hear the forgiving and loving of receiving hands

Ronald Rae

The road is packed with people leaving who do not want to leave
There are no pilgrims here – today is not a holy day or a holy war
The amount to be frozen has turned bread hard as bricks
A city is on the move if you are here you are here for each other
The voice the one voice that you hear it comes from
What lies around the next corner
It comes from crowds of people worried about the future for their children
The voice of anonymity the voice of two eyes
Listen to it as it lights a fire for the night
Fantastic that those sitting around it
No one talks of the road they have left behind
Except that is when they awake to a cold dawn
With bricks for bread there is a look in the eye that says
No matter what happens now this time tomorrow
On the shoulders of no matter who will be the one word
That word like the sun coming up will move us forward

Ronald Rae

You are no more a cripple than I am a long-eared bat
The earth is waiting for you to put down your two feet
The earth’s core is waiting to be told
That you have walked past the post you said you could not
Two steps of the road and you are thriving on it
What a thought maybe there are souls living on Mars
Like you taking two steps at a time
For this you should not be put off but encouraged
Souls are souls no matter where the road
Your tread will be heard at the world’s heart

Ronald Rae

Little bastard he has nowhere to run to
Saddled with all these clocks
Where the hell does he think he is going
So many clocks and not one at the correct time
His own face itself a clock the hands of his eyes stopped
If he trips and falls imagine the ding-dongs
Stupid bastard why does he keep going
For whom and to where must this poor porter
Of clocks carry his and our time
Let us call him George this clock carrier
Let him with his burden not be vilified
And there you have it a time-keeper
Focused on a time he hopes will never come to an end
To spare our poor George if you must know the time
Give him who has no reason and every reason
Tell him to his eyes there is no such thing as the correct time
Tell him if he waits long enough and if he lives long enough
He will come to understand what it means
The gift of a child’s toy watch in his pocket
Never tell the time or a lie that it sets time going
Never with the future twist the road or forget to mend it
That it loses track of where it is going
For poor George and his toy watch the hope is that he never forgets
Things will not pass that have no need to pass

Ronald Rae

He picked up his pipe
And filled it not with tobacco
But with the old reality that
An eye for an eye we are God’s equal
With no blame attached and
No answers expected
Created in God’s image
There has to be recovery
On one very beautiful night
My friend lit his pipe
Took his first draw and
Then spoke of ten thousand
Stories that he knew by heart
Fantastic stories stories that became friends
Remembering them now
I can’t remember if ever
I saw smoke coming from his pipe
When realities are smoked
What do they look like
And with God’s image in mind
If he tapped out his pipe
Unpaid philosophers that we are
He said nothing

Ronald Rae

All because of a rose planted in the wrong place
A young man the gardener more than
Losing face he loses his life
Praising both the cautious and the bold
In the event the rose does what all roses do
It produces first the thorn and then the bloom
Translate this into cities and those that live there
Translate it into what the human condition knows of things invisible
My nose is not bleeding it is missing
As if it were not enough my eyes are nowhere to be found
My limbs those too are missing
Yesterday what I was able to say today remains unsaid
But look at my head still in place are my ears
It seems my ears have not lost their listening
Ears like this they hear better in a crowd
A hearing so good they can hear
Forming into dust the birth sound
Listening to the loudest and quietest of what we fear
Such a pair of ears hears the world going underground
An ear re-constructing itself shaping itself into a listening ear
My ear is against the door and behind it what do I hear
I hear the cotton wool in the world’s ears

Ronald Rae

If you forget this village you have ignored
Why in the first place it was built upon the earth
Ask yourself of your two eyes what it is that they wish to cover up
Of a house and the collapse of its roof before it happened
Who was it sheltered there was it the big black tear that nothing matters
Or was it water thin the tear down a face accepting that nothing happens
For instance the ghost of a village even with a
Gun to its head what you are shooting is a child standing there
Free killings and drawings in the dust
No wonder this village was built out
Of dust and built upon the earth

Ronald Rae

It seems for a thousand years
I have been watching the apples
Ripen on my apple tree
Perhaps far into the unknown
There will be people like me

Who this minute are looking at the same tree and thinking
Just what is it about apples ripening
And this thousand years of mine
Why is everything left to the imagination

Ronald Rae