“Mothers will make peace, so sons will not die.” Huda, a Palestinian journalist living in Jordan, as quoted in “Women’s Gathering Gives Peace a Chance,” Women’s E-News, April 13, 2006
Will it come to this, then? The mothers rising
like Furies unleashed, banishing war
from the souls of men, their fierce wombs
howling with the memory of seedling sons —
how they quickened and grew,
ripening into beautiful babies, brimming with
hope, their futures overflowing with laughter,
love, the kisses of grateful mothers — not bombs,
not bloodshed, not rage.
Will the mothers unite, dressed in saris of apricot
& nectarine, African headdresses of fuchsia, green,
& yellow, American blue jeans and T-shirts, Italian
leather jackets? Will they defy the edicts, the lies,
the clarion calls to violence everywhere — the battlefield,
the bedroom, the boardroom, the brothel?
Mothers with dark faces heed their sons’ cries,
their daughters’ anguish; mothers with blue eyes
or black, mothers with Arab hearts or Israeli, inner-city moms
or moms in mini-vans, farm wives and nuns, scholars
and poets, Asian or Mexican, white-skinned or brown,
young or old. Can they re-tether the war-weary
world to their ruptured umbilical cords? Mend every tattered soul?
Can peace prevail if fathers fail
to join their holy efforts? Or must mothers shoulder
the grief alone, bearing the world’s sorrows,
as they bear the pains of labor,
giving birth to justice that hungers for compassion,
transformation that conjures a different kind of world?
“Mothers Will Make Peace” was originally published on newversenews.com, Sunday, April 30, 2006
Read Meet Mago Contributor, Mary Saracino, and her other posts.
It was good to read this wonderful poem Mary. After this latest mass shooting I found myself falling into despair – what will it take to stop these atrocities? Mothers are perhaps are only hope because mothers carry the fury of the disenfranchised while giving birth to to children and to themselves –
The question this magnificent poem asks needs to be asked every day – because the query is the “root” that must be given priority if we are to survive the holocaust the Earth is living through at this moment in time.
How wonderful the synergy of this powerful poem from Co-editor Mary Saracino published the same day as our Editor Rosemary Mattingley have a speech in India at a conference on world peace.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!! It reminds me of a new book I recently read: Pure Vision, The Magdalene Revelation by Perri Birney. I think anyone reading this blog would really enjoy it.
This poem is both timely and timeless, would B great if someday it could B historically relevant to a peaceful world!
must mothers shoulder
the grief alone —
Mary, this is the central question. Such a timely post.