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
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
Whether you believe in salvation or not
At least give this young kid a chance
Here he is shouting to the crowd and
The crowd with stones to throw not a soul is listening
Is this how it is with the inconsolable
They throw stones and in the throwing accuse themselves
They lynch their own shadows and hang them against white walls
Until it becomes the unbelievable
The water in the well is not fit for drinking
With guns and stones glued to their hands
The crowd moves and it grieves
And the kid tired of shouting at his own face
With anyone who will share it
He offers bread that the crowd bears what it has to bear
For this the profoundest dark
He carries an unlit candle in his heart
If it’s down to laying waste our vineyards
And armies that they are burning wheatfields
What else can we do but leave our homes
In this madness all you can think of is getting your family to safety
Anything to get away from the smell of good grain burning
Those that are doing this they should be made to stand on hot coals
The generals they should be made to eat the ash of their doing
Damn my country’s flag and damn the politics around it
Can they not see that I carry on my shoulders
Something more valuable than my own life is to me
One day my son’s life will cross yours
He too will wonder for this short distance
Was it worth it the time we took to count the cost
In your preparations for war
Have you thought closely on
The instant and on the deed
For what are you implementing
An inventory of skeletons
In whose name are you taking names
And over what distance are you expecting to come home
Why should it be an order against ourselves
That so many innocent people have to die
Instead of a surrender flag wave your comrade’s bones
This should bring us up close to our inhumanity
The sight of someone who was and now no longer is
This should be enough to weaken the resolve of going to war
The little master his village is in ruins
And here he is fishing for his own face in a puddle
Brave little bastard his ambition does not reflect his situation
Nor does his age reflect his purpose
Here at the edge of a stagnant puddle
A world situation is being resolved
He spits into his face and watches for it to come back into place
One day this puddle will be nothing more than a dry pothole in the road
And the little master’s face with no puddles to go home to
Instead he draws his face in the dust of the road
With the shooting stopped and the freedom fighter at last finding his true voice
This is how it is my friends we are all of us
Tied to our lives by a thread no thicker than a hoverfly’s thought
So tell your children from today the sun will remain high in the sky
Their shadows will be able to move around and not be shot
A home for this country of ours will always be behind our eyes
From there our lookouts will marvel at this new-found stability
Queues will be everywhere praising what they see and believe
Not oil but wheat will win the day and the day being won
We with our enemies will sit down to eat
You say that you are finished with being a revolutionary
But what about the whistle in your pocket who is going to play it
God knows the madness in this world has need of such a whistle
Look what we are making of life a parade of willing and unwilling skeletons
You and your whistle I think it’s time for you to empty your pockets
What can it arouse that is not faith in ourselves
Playing your whistle to a world that needs it
A simple tune played on a simple instrument
Unlike the man who offers nothing of himself to the world
Your music whether he likes it or not will be continually filling his pockets
Here under the wilderness tree the world’s tree
Who is to say that this uncertain world won’t follow you or listen to you
As on a good day conscience comes not to accuse but to console
Is it not to the fruit-pickers we should look
Who from under their belts is slackened a good coupling
Love and love again a country is being born
So if you can put ears and eyes to it
Take your whistle and move forward
The ground you stand on take it step by step
Tremendous times you have a revolution
At your fingertips and in your mouth
What can I tell him twenty-four hours from now
He will be brought out of the bowels of the earth
The last to be rescued the last and the first
To tell us that life is sweet and
Fresh air and daylight they come at you two caring hands
In this and in no more God has become an engineer a rescue worker
If man was created for anything it is for this
That he stands under the sky his wife and children beside him
To see this man rise up hard and strong as a rock
Here is a man to keep a millpond in his mind chooses to look at a rough sea
A man who is a crowd the same and all waiting to be rescued
For our hope and this crazy bad timing
It’s not sunshine that awaits him
But a dull wet wonderful day a day
So placed to give life without taking it
For the man for the first time seeing the sun
For this we are placing our hands on the earth
What hope does when it hopes there is heartbeat to be felt
The depth that will bring forward this man
Has created for itself a voice
A voice that wants nothing more
Than to be heard above ground
In twenty-four hours a country will surface a miner
That miner more precious than the pit and its gold
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
Hand-carved granite sculptures in public and private collections
