New Born

These stories can be revealed,
Now that peace has broken the seal,
Our ancestors' fighting and our Mothers' screaming,
Are long ago in our consciousness,
We are rising like a cork escaping a wreck,
We are rising like a heaving chest,
We lay our shock at the door of the truth,
And know what we knew not,
Letting it pass like clouds and thunder rain.
A torrent of violent emotion spills us past,
Yet we are not drowning any more,
What once overwhelmed is now knee deep,
Retains no power, no vengeance, no recurrent tide,
What once hypnotised our vulnerable minds,
Now spins child-like to the floor,
A tantrum of a willful, unbridled nano-sense,
A belch in an eternity of grace,
A hiccup, a distortion, a perturbing crease,
Amidst the still, crisp perfection of cradling hands,
And so we lightly close the door,
On a child's last feint sobs and red stained eyes,
Inviting sleep to erase the day's devils, its dogma, its dramatic turns,
Trusting in the clean slate of tomorrow,
And in our forgetful, forgiving selves.
Trusting in the benigness of our Universal space,
And the first smile of a new born face.

(Well, what can I say about this poem? Like many of my poems, these words are about the possibility of transformation, of escaping from the past with all its frightening memories. Not just at an individual level but at a collective level. The poem describes a feeling of having emerged from a traumatic history to gain a new perspective and then leaving this history behind once and for all. The trigger for this possibility is a period of peace ('Now that peace has broken the seal'), the likes of which we have been fortunate to experience in our lifetimes in the Western world. A history which once overwhelmed us and controlled us and therefore was acted out over and over again is maybe no longer 'in the driving seat'. This history is likened to a child-like state of mind, a temporary stage from which we can 'grow up'. It is also positioned as a peculiarly human stage that we have created amongst a wider Universe that does not share our 'tantrums' but looks on and waits for it to pass, waits for 'normal service' to be resumed ('amidst the still, crisp perfection of cradling hands'). The poem closes with the image of a parent leaving an upset child just before they fall asleep. As every parent knows, the child wakes up in the morning having forgotten and forgiven, having wiped the slate clean, fresh, hopeful and smiling! A wonderful vision for the human race.)