Those who sacrifice innocent lives to politics and to the ego of politics
Will never find within themselves the spiritual tools to forgive themselves
Or in old age supping with old memories and stacks of old calendars find
The conscience long lost to such a bloody cost the last cries of our children
Their curses now a frightening religion a lost religion a trapped religion
A lonely room a lonely room curtains drawn and no redemption
Ronald Rae
Something about fires evacuation and the bulldozers moving in
Something about all over again the massacre of the innocents is upon us
From the pages of the bible those of combat the whole thing again upon us
Something about doing the right thing and carrying out what has to be done
Something about the clothes of our inhumanity and again we are wearing them
Something about repeating over and over the same crimes against ourselves
Something about someone else’s problem that it’s never ours
Something about being displaced and forgotten and there’s no end to it
Ronald Rae
No open book of scripture is a match for a hive of bees
Not words and their completeness but pollens and the drunkenness of their sweetness
To see something of what it means to be inside the crowning of a great miracle
Take yourself with a torch into the world of bees
Witness the sweet and dying returns of a God kept in mind
In the hives of ascension and across our human lands
The democracy of being able to sting is the democracy of restraint
Better applied is the soothing hive and its sacred schemes
Ronald Rae
Humanity first and politics last it was a great Mother who said this
In grief we are all brothers and sisters the clouds overhead said this
And the differences between us those differences are really wanting to befriend us
Of all who live who intend for the soul that our humanity will never desert us
Even if what we see so many wounded lives lying in the street
Even if walking with us the liberation of evil is smiling at us
Always it will be humanity first our humanity a location every human being can trust
Humanity first who was it reported this who was it kneeling there
It was a face without a name it was compassion without asking for it
It was healing identified with God it was God who said this
Ronald Rae
I watched a little boy flying his kite no ordinary kite
At the end of the string flying higher and higher
Is a plum tree hanging with fruit
How bizarre is this and how fantastically courageous
A little boy given the gift of imagination
That flying his kite the plum tree
Will drop its fruit into the hungry mouths waiting below
Food for a country at war and a kite
For the people to stop hating one another
A kite controlled by a little boy
And a plum tree dropping its fruit
I think love itself is overcome with joy
And I see it now if you want to fly a kite
Make sure you have the imagination to fly it
Ronald Rae
The world as it must become
Countries and borders dissolving
Faster than God can blink his eye
Migration is on the move
Ronald Rae
Before the magnificent illusion got going
Before my mother’s going into labour
Before the breaking of waters
Before the forceps mark on my brain
Before God was thought of
My birth-voice gave majesty to the unknown
A voice from the crown of possibility
The great waiting of waiting to be born
My earth-voice a spate of promise
My birth-voice an umbilical
Something to do with the speed
Of light catching up with itself
Before my birth what a commotion
Ronald Rae
A spider was asked to give up the spinning of its web and to go and live
Where with human beings it could understand their sacred texts
The spider of course cared nothing for this and continued to spin its web
As for the sacred texts they remained unread by the spider
But that was yesterday today we are living with crueller events
The sacred texts have got themselves caught in the spider’s web
And like the sad end of a great novel are about to be eaten by the spider
So calm is the spider the time being now the feast being now so real is the carnage
Where is there a web like this the drumming of the immediate in the now
The sacred texts now sad sad little bundles the snags of
The here and now as mortal as mortality can get and
The spider see how it sleeps free of regret
See how in surviving it curls not into prayer or into the folds of a pre-eminent God
But spins shrouds for stars and stars for seeing bright the prey that might come
The spider owes them nothing
Ronald Rae
We have many moral imperatives none more pressing
Than we disappear from the face of the earth
So says the prophet of prophets there is no claim
That we are more divine than the stones in the field
It could be in our survive and be damned attitude
We human beings have forfeited our right to walk the face of the earth
It could reasonable that extinction is not personalised
But necessary for our spirits to soar where they can do least harm
Ronald Rae