Mother, The Great Stones Got To Move short commentary

"Mother, the Great Stones Got To Move"

-Lorna Goodison

Mother, ­one stone is wedged across the hole in our historyand sealed with blood wax.In this hole is our side of the story, exact figures,headcounts, burial artifacts, documents, lists, mapsshowing our way up through the stars; lockets of brasscontaining all textures of hair clippings.It is the half that has never been told,and some of us must tell it. Mother, there is the stone on the hearts of some women and mensomething like an onyx, cabochon-cut,which hung on the wearer seeds bad dreams. Speaking for the smalldreamers of this earth, plagued with nightmares, yearningfor healing dreamswe want the stone to move. Upon an evening like this, mother, when one year is making wayfor another, in a ceremony attended by a show of silver stars,mothers see moon, milk-fed, herself a nursing motherand we think of our children and the stones upon their futureand we want these stones to move. For the year going out came in fat at firstbut toward the harvest it grew lean,and many mouth corners gathered whiteand another kind of poison, powdered whitewas brought in to replace what was green,And death sells it with one handand with the other death palms a gunthen death gets death’s picturein the paper’s asking “where does all this death come from?”Mother, stones are pillowsfor the homeless sleep on concrete sheets.Stone flavors soup, stone is now meat,the hard-hearted giving our childrenstones to eat. Mother, the great stones over mankind got to move,It’s been ten thousand years we’ve been watching them nowfrom various points in the universe.From the time of our birth as points of lightin the eternal coiled workings of the cosmos.Roll away stone of poisoned powders cometo blot out the hope of our young.Move stones of the sacrificial lives we breedto feed to suicide god of tribalism.From across the pathway to mount morningsite of the rose quartz fountainbrimming anise and star waterbright fragrant for our children’s futureMother these great stones got to move. 

Commentary:

Whenever we hear the word “mother” or something of the likes within a poem, specifically in the title of a poem, we most probably expect it to be talking about scenes and/or happenings than usually involves domestic issues but in the poem “Mother, the Great Stones Got to Move” by Lorna Goodison, the author did something that is broad, and not common as she tackled about different things/issues using only one object which is the “Great stones”.

The Great Stones symbolizes problems/issues that we face. And I think that the reason why the author described all of the problems using the only one inanimate object was because she wanted to tell us, the readers, that problems wouldn’t be fixed unless we do something for it to be gone.

I had also noticed that in the poem, the line “Mother, the Great Stones Got to Move” was told in  tone that seemed slow and calm and I think that this suggests that around the time the poem was written, there was still no actions being done and so, the author kept on reminding patiently.