A Bereaved Mother Speaks

E. H. JohnsonAngry

Let’s have no flowery speeches over the dead. My young son sleeps, a bullet in his head. (Dear God, I ask what is there to be said?)

Each week he sent me messages of cheer; Assured me always that real peace was near. (Don't let him know we are still fighting here!)

Please do not fire volleys over his grave; He earned his peace -- a peace we failed to save. (I bite my lips. God help me to be brave...)

Why must this show be staged here every year To honor those who are no longer here? (Was it for this, they paid a price so dear?)

We should give up this vain jingo display, Silence the bands, bow our heads and pray. (My Gold Star, Lord, feels very cold today...)

E. H. Johnson

SourceLicence:Public domain (US, unrenewed)

Mood:: Angry
Topics:: mother, war, grave, son

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Summary

A mother stands at a memorial ceremony for her dead son and refuses to play along. The speeches, the gunfire salutes, the marching bands: she wants none of it. What she wants is quiet. The poem is built from two voices. The main lines are what she says aloud, blunt and controlled, while the lines in parentheses are what she cannot say, the raw feelings underneath. Her son wrote cheerful letters promising that peace was close, and she suspects he was shielding her from the truth, just as she now hides her own pain from everyone watching.

The central bitterness is in the line about a "peace we failed to save." She seems to feel that the living have let down the dead, and that the yearly show of patriotism is a way of avoiding that guilt. The mood is tense and restrained, anger and sorrow pressed down until the last line, where the Gold Star pin, the emblem of a lost child, simply feels "very cold."

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My young son sleeps, a in his head.

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