“The Tower of Mothers” by Evelyn Bence (poem)

Kollwitz, Kathe_Tower of Mothers — Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945), *Turm der Mütter* (Tower of Mothers), 1937–38. Bronze, 27.9 × 27.4 × 28.8 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Photo: Craig Boyko / AGO. Kollwitz lost her son in World War I, and much of her work from then on grappled with the horror of that loss or expressed antiwar resistance.

  a sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz

Five Bethlehem women close ranks
to shield sons with hip and hide.
“We will rest in the peace of His hands
before your swords pierce a child.
Spare them or shower us with spears.
Let our blood disarm you, rout you,
haunt you, cowering through nights
that smother your sleep.”
A bosom is no breastplate,
a skirt no fortress wall.
As futile as Babel
the tower falls in,
life upon life.
Death seizes all.

This poem was originally published in The Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature, vol. 3 (Spring 1999). Used by permission of the author.

Evelyn Bence (born 1952) is a writer and editor living in Arlington, Virginia. She is the author of Room at My Table; Prayers for Girlfriends and Sisters and Me; Spiritual Moments with the Great Hymns; and the award-winning Mary’s Journal, a novel written in the voice of Jesus’s mother. She has served as religion editor at Doubleday, managing editor for Today’s Christian Woman, and senior editor at Prison Fellowship Ministries. Her personal essays, poems, and devotional reflections have appeared in various publications.