The Lost Babies (Poetry)

(A documentary made by Esther Rantzen for BBC2
and broadcast on Saturday 18th August 1984)

First published in Word Craft Issue 15 Spring 1985

No squirm of warm, wet, wrinkled flesh
No debut yell
To rend the waiting air with news —
Glad tidings tell.
Instead the struggling silence hung
In tattered sighs
And gethered tears to wash the grief
From sorrowed eyes
That searched the pale, unmoving lips
For just one breath
To fill the tiny, passive form
And banish death.
But all was still, no sound could stir
This child we mourn
Untroubled by the pangs of life —
A babe still-born.
Gone to dwell in other worlds
Defying birth
Sweet bundle lovingly consigned
To this quiet earth.
We take with us a memory
Of one pure face
Lost to us, but in our hearts
Remains a place
Inviolate and full of love
Beyond compare
Remembering this little one
Whose loss we share.