seeking world peace and personal peace
thru poetry
14 May 2000
MOTHER’S DAY PROCLAMATION
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
whether your baptism be that of water
or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided
by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage,
for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to
unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them
of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
will be too tender of those of another
country
and not allow our sons to be trained
to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth
a voice goes up with
our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor
violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and
the anvil at the summons of war,
Let us women now leave all that may be
left of home
for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meed first, as women, to bewail
and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with
each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live
in peace,
each bearing after his own time the sacred
impress, not of Caesar,
But of Goddess/God
In the name of womanhood and of humanity,
I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women without
limit of nationality
may be appointed and held at some place
deemed most convenient
and at the earliest period consistent
with its objects,
to promote the alliance of the different
nationalities,
the amicable settlement of international
questions,
the great and general interests of peace.
- Julia Ward Howe, Boston 1870
edited by Summer Breeze
entrance