Poems (Kennedy)/Mothers of Men

by Sara Beaumont Kennedy

MOTHERS OF MEN

'TIS said in the forums of nations
 That peace may dawn any day,
And wise ones will gather together
 The debt of the Hun to weigh.
There some may dare whimper of "pity,"
 Some whine about "sympathy" then,
But—outside of that chamber of council
 Are standing the mothers of men.

The mothers who sorrowed and suffered,
 Who went down the depths of despair,
Who travailed in soul and in body—
 These women are waiting out there.
They have not forgotten the insults
 Too deep to be framed into speech,
Nor the homes that were burned down to ashes,
 Nor the things that such cruelties teach.

They remember, those martyrs of Belgium,
 Those women of France bled white;
Oh, they stopped their numb ears, but the crying
 Of loved ones went on through the night!
They have prayed till their hearts were blood-sweated,
 They have cursed in their fury of wrong,
They know, through the fullness of torture,
 Where the guilt and the payment belong.

They are asking no share in the councils,
 But they wait outside and apart
And the silence that settles upon them
 Is a silence that clutches the heart;
For if Justice should falter or quibble
 When their story of wrong is unfurled,
The protest they send up to heaven
 Will shake the big heart of the world.

They trod the hot plowshares of torture,
 Their sons went down to the dust,
Their children were led through the shambles
 To the pagan altars of lust.
And so when the council shall gather
 To sentence the foemen, then
'Tis they who will speak in the judgment—
 They, the mothers of men.