Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HIS MOTHER'S TEARS, by DOUGLAS MALLOCH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HIS MOTHER'S TEARS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The officers were putting on the train
Last Line: But more the memory of my mother's tears.
Subject(s): Mothers; Soldiers


The officers were putting on the train
A boy of seventeen -- and tears like rain
Ran down his mother's cheeks. Had she for this
Suffered upon the woman's bed of pain,
Given her life, her labor, and her kiss?

For I remember hours of illness, when
The weary nights, and then the days again,
She kept her vigil, standing ever there
Beside his bed, his surest medicine
His mother's tenderness, his mother's pray'r.

No fear could ever drive her from his side;
Though more were stricken and though many died,
Though there was danger in his very breath,
Her mother-love was bravely satisfied
To stand on guard between her boy and death.

And through the years she taught as best she could
That wrong is wrong, and naught can make it good --
The simple truths that she herself had learned.
And now they know around the neighborhood
Not only Christ, his mother, too, he spurned.

He pays the price. I wonder, does he pay?
My heart was aching as I turned away.
He pays a little, but his mother more --
With dreams defeated, and with hairs of gray,
And shame, yet yearning for the babe she bore.

I think if I were he, and prison-clad,
Remembering the mother that I had,
The hardest thing to face would not be years
Behind the bars, the years however sad --
But more the memory of my mother's tears.





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