In a country too hot to give birth
A young girl is doing just that giving birth
In temperatures where the only shade
Is the shadow cast by a pencil balanced on the warlord’s table
The girl in labour now she can shout out
The heart of the sun the heat of the sun
What does it know of midwifery
What do wars know of the breaking of waters
A birth into a war-torn and parched land
A birth looking down into the driest well known to man
Sand and blood just how brave are births to become that
We should go to the hottest place in the sun
And ask it for our own sakes to bless the birth of this child
We should make tracks for tomorrow’s dawn
And with the girl’s afterbirth keep it and treasure it
Treasure it like it was the enabler and the birth of a nation

Ronald Rae

There’s something about us that endures fires
A blaze out of control is a blaze out of control
But not the death of a firstborn
The death of a child is not a par for the course life goes on event
There’s no doubt about it we human beings
Will never be released from tragedy or religion talking about it
Only a bird circling high in the sky is free of religion
A nature without words of religion to explain it
Is a nature somewhere else and not understood
Always with the mystery is the greater mystery of its source
Quiet as a newly laid egg it can be said of the source
It takes a greater patience to warm it and watch it hatch
Inside our loss we should take more care
Too much of the candle and you blot out what you hope to light up
The bird circling high its birdbones
Are a knowledge but not of any grave
When Spring blossoms appear what do they know of our cancers
When life is and exists and passes through the moment
How else speak for certainty but not overlong
That it becomes uncertainty leased into the hands of prayer
Prayer as nature would have it – beyond belief unreachable
The source and how it lives with the death of a child

Ronald Rae

My hands are on the table and my life is in front of you
In the silence we both know where hope is taking us
Let us be quick but not deadly in our beliefs
Let us bury our weapons where we can never again find them
Surely secure are the places and the memories of those we still know
Like prayers being prayed we want to know
Those that shall not be buried where we can find them
Across this table you and I are holding something special
We have arrived at a gate that wants to open for us
Where was a munitions factory there is now a pasture
Our children’s children are running out to greet us
For the good work we did in the past
Here we are for them holding hands across the table
Life as it is there’s not an atom
In any extremity wants to dive into a grave for cover

Ronald Rae

For the ease of pain and suffering the angels of this world are many
Flying on fuel from a selfless source
Catch one of these angels in full-flight and the action is wonderful
Not like us with our untried wings
The aspiration may be there but take-offs are difficult
Because at times our inhumanity seems our only cause
Should an angel crash-land into these thoughts
I like to think in trying to revive it
Our concern for it will tell it something
That a law has been passed and an air-space cleared
We may be grounded but we can
Help to get air-borne what we most hope for
That one day invisible on our backs our own wings will come
Call it the soaring of mercies
As neighbours we have become Samaritans

Ronald Rae

What is famine but a country that wants to be a desert
Yet here are souls still with the energy to make love and to produce children
Soldiers and that stupid term freedom fighters
Here they are their mouths dry as a bone
And going to war against their brothers
We do these things and the desert grows before our eyes
The lizard looks up and before the sun goes down it lies dead
So radical is this indifferent land
You can die or you can make love
And if you are clever you can conceal
Your shadow crossing the border

Ronald Rae