Part 2: War Cries
Songs of Grief
19. OUT OF THE CITADEL
We Women have One of two Paths before us :
WE CAN REMAIN in our darkened homes, our shaking citadel, and submit to history as it has always been remembered : await yet again the inevitable threat and growl towards another, up-dated ordeal of Menace and War ; and accept the inevitable Violations. As so many crouch beneath them now, in disparate world times and places, beating down upon Women and Children and Elders and upon Men of Peace, of every political banner : to great and less degree.
At least half of all war deaths – and often up to 90 per cent – for centuries and through to the present day, are those of civilians – Women and Children and Elders, in murder and injury and internment and slavery and famine.
But we are indeed gathering strength today, in our hiding : as women of more advantaged or liberal nations gain self-dependence, reach out through our network, our international travel and communications ; and learn about our imprisoned sisters, undertake to help them.
Many take their lone and brave philosophies into the heart of men’s institutions ; and slowly light these hierarchies with their shared decision-making and lateral networks of care.
And gathering numbers of grown Men are entering the warmth of new communication; and are conjoining this with their rigorous talents to bring about real, constructive, heartfelt Change.
But we are Running Out Of Time.
Good example and teaching is right, and beautiful; and must continue apace.
But it is very slow.
And even in a good and evolving society:
it does not change this Fact :
that women in such societies ~
even now, at this millennium ~
remain mere bird-calls in the corridors of power
in lands and laws and structures and planetary industries where
majority deep voice decides.
And that a vast majority of our world-Sisters
remain fiercely Silenced :
and Exhausted beyond words
by their ordeals of poverty,
of overwork,
of child-bearing, childrearing,
of illness, home defence,
and paralysing losses.
If we literate women of advantaged societies are to reach such Sisters, and reach out to our Brothers in their Ordeal :
We must find Another Path.
*
WE CAN RISE UP in our numbers, we Women, and call to each other across the Globe : and gather our real and allegoric voices together :
Address Our Warrior Men :
THIS IS WHO SPEAKS : We ~ your Women of the Citadel, your Mothers, your Daughters, your Wives, Sisters, Lovers, Grandmothers.
We are utterly unarmed. We have a baby on one hip, and a toddler at the other hand.
Our grandparents and mothers and young sons and daughters walk with us.
We are coming out.
We are showing ourselves in your man-made zones of war.
We are coming out of the citadel, and into the blasted streets of your cities. And we are Walking Into, Falling Into, the face of your withering machinegun fire.
We will see our baby children and our grandfathers and our sisters drop in the midst of our crowd, as your snipers pick them off.
THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE HUNTING OUT.
Here we are:
the Defenceless Treasures of your territorial and urban homes.
Your women, your babies, your old and frail people.
In our thousands, our millions.
* You can keep firing, if you want, in your hideous war-arenas and on your malevolent device-screens, until we are all mowed down ;
and joined our sisters and our slain warrior brothers
in Release from this Hell of War on Earth. *
*
* *
Or you can, instead, raise up your gunsights, and look upon us at last :
these long-imprisoned families,
flooding your ruined city streets.
~ Our quiet, loving, massive, gathering throng. Open-handed. Defenceless. Offering our exposed flanks utterly to your gunfire : our coloured shawls, our pale cotton dresses. Our prams and strollers. Pushing our grandmothers and our grandfathers in their wheelchairs.
Now you have us before your sight.
And how Fearsome are we, this Sight? –
In our marching, singing thousands?
– carrying our babies, and our bleeding wounded, and our heavy dead.
What are you going to do with us,
This March of Tears?
Our Weapons are only
Heartbreak,
and Grief,
and Love.
And this weapon also :
Our readiness to Die for you, Because of you ;
* To depart forever from your sight. *
*
* *
There is no primal duty of warrior defence, O Men :
if you all undertake to cease attack :
to relinquish Fear.
And Dogma. And Greed. And Acquisition.
There remains, then, only that primary, sacred task for Men and Women :
To Provide.
With two good, free hands :
For Love,
and for Life.
*
We can look upon our shattered populations, recognise at last the absolutely Levelling Equality which is Suffering :
~ to Recognise our historic, internationally Shared responsibility for the despairing excesses of human behaviour which have been rwanda, bosnia, belfast, palestine, cambodia, syria, yemen, australian settlement history.
– Know that All People behave fundamentally according to the Same Laws ; and that when a nation breaks out in ethnic genocide, or rampant tyranny ~ the pressures of iniquity and deprivation have been too much to bear :
~ Too much hopeless bondaged debt, or hunger, or servitude, invasion, intolerance, threat, overcrowding, paranoia, imprisonment, duty of obedience, heavy armament, fear of militarism, or cultural destruction.
~ Too little space, or hearing, or funds, generosity, cultural understanding, respect, sharing, equity, assistance, teaching, code of honour, spiritual grace, or love.
*
It is our human nature, our satisfaction ~
to Provide.
This is the key to peace and happiness on Earth : to lay to rest our voracious juggernauts of munitions and war, which consume literally half the world’s precious time and resources in acts of destruction, a truly god-forsaken tyranny of machine-gun misery. And which lock much of the world’s economy into brutal munitions traffic.
This is the key to survival of our very Being : to uplift Life from the ashes of War, and put into the hands of Men the arts and tools of Provision : give Fathers Peace and Stillness at long last, heal their pain with acts of loving Reconstruction.
roads, highways, houses
ploughing, harrowing, cropping
*
* *
In undertaking to Repair, world-wide, the ravages of millennia of war :
to share our resources, upraise and heal these direly injured of our World’s Peoples ~
We can, at last, Forgive Ourselves:
we All, we Men and Women.
As in our collective actions of
Provision and Reparation,
our Apology is made :
and human life on Earth evolves at last
to Maturity:
We advance to Wisdom.
Our Initiatic Reward attained :
The Freedom to Love Life in Peace.
