NIOBE - A Mother´s Story
Eutokos, "happy in her children, fruitful," they called me. Because so many were my children, and they were young, beautiful and healthy. So many boys and girls, I had.
Life pervaded me whenever a child from my body came to the world, and every time the uncontrollable, foolish thought that life in me would never die, I confess, inhabited me. Through me the world continued to pulsate, through my creatures and their indomitable strength to live and seek every meaning and every possibility in life.
For long years I slept quiet sleeps, tired of work but full of good energy, after seeing them fall asleep in their beds every night with their clean, innocent faces. And that wretched thought was in me.
Then the planes came with their fruits of death, and they took away from me a son playing in the street.
Then came the invincible disease, and took away a daughter playing the violin.
Then a dirty bomb came, full of nails and splinters, taking another child away at the gate of a concert hall.
Then came masked and armed men who took away other children while they were sitting in their school, with their teachers.
Then came the drug, black murderous beast, that another child consumed with desperation.
Then came the alcohol, which led two others to drive on the freeway for their last time.
There was only one survivor who, decided to share the destiny of all his brothers and sisters, broken by the pain and the fear of living.
No tears I have left, mother of all the world's children who the world has killed. No tears, no breathing, no life beat in this life which now is so sterile. I feel like a stone, my hands that rocked those children, the mouth kissing them, the belly that welcomed them, the feet that rushed to their recalls. Everything is firm, alert, drained. Silence of laughter, silence of infinite names, which rattle one by one in my heart of stone.