*Note: Once again, I am beyond grateful to present another outstanding poem by the one and only Walt Garlington. Thank you sir! Many things have gone astray in the postmodern collapse, motherhood being but one of them. Walt offers a stark comparison and contrast, then to now. Read on! 

 

‘The Repaganization of Motherhood’
By Walt Garlington

 

In the days when Hadrian held the reigns
Of the Roman state, a fruitful olive tree
Growing in the Italian land, Sophia,
Godly-minded, brought forth three children,
A cluster of virtues, Faith, Hope, and Love,
Who, for their faithfulness to Jesus Christ,
Were brought before the Emperor himself.
Interrogating the daughters one by one,
Growing wrathful at their constancy in Christ,
Each he had tortured and slain, as their mother
Encouraged them in their sufferings
To remain steadfast, till a martyr’s crown
They received. Rejoicing in their triumphant feat,
And burying the precious relics
Of their bodies, the fruit of her womb
Made holy through the contest with the foe,
Sophia hastened to join them in Heaven,
Reposing three days after, slain in spirit.

In the days when an abstract People,
Strange non-entity, supposedly govern themselves,
Mothers take forms found in ancient pagan myths,
Monstrous creatures who their offspring murder
For a self-centered reason, consign them
To oblivion without a grave to rest in,
And console their consciences with the salve
Of support from fellow heartless women,
Or seek death to silence the Voice of God within.
Such the Cyclopean spirit that pervades:
A fitting friend for the ghost of Prometheus
That fills that hearts of men with loathsome hubris.