Mother then, oh, mother then,
Did your children laugh and play?
Did the sunburn gold by day
And blossom in the almond tree?
Did it softly fall on thee?
Did your children stretch and thrive;
Were they glad to be alive?
Did the arrowed corn spring green -
Had the donkey then that sheen
That quiet soul and heart-peace gives
When careful-hung creation lives?
Mother now, oh, mother now,
Do your children laugh and play
Fed, contented, spacious, gay?
Buds will sicken, birds will die,
Sun burn pale in man-mown sky
All that glitters is not gold
But dust and ashes in the hold
Of men grown sated, thin in mind.
Ill in the soul and brother-blind.
Sobbing sins are not bemoaned;
Crying love has not atoned.
Mother then, oh, mother then,
Did you watch your boys grow tall,
Measures chalked on vineyard wall?
Leaping from the olive trees
Did your bandits cut their knees?
Did you ever fear the death
Of a boy you’d given breath?
Did you see thick shadows lie
Barred across his eager eye?
Though you suffered occupation
Did no hope uphold your nation?
Mother now, oh, mother now,
Do you watch your boys grow tall
Suffocated by the pall
Of poverty, putrescence foul,
War disease and beggar’s howl?
Do you see the shadows creep
Thick towards your boys asleep?
Do you see the world-space shrink
Till we totter on the brink?
Can you face their choking fear
That the world is ending here?
Mother then, oh, mother then,
Send your Son to selfish men;
Send Him late but send Him now
To mothers now, each mother now.
Would your children laugh and play
Were they in this terrored day?
(February, 1971)
