Mother And Spartan Woman Poem by Joseph S. Josephides

He resorted in the temple and enclosed himself
as a suppliant, but she his mother, being Spartan
builds him in with stones, sending him to death.

She, Pausanias’ mother, cries inside her, but
the other women urge her 'add more stones.'
She is writhing. Soon her son will not breathe,
starvation will capture him, will fall into a coma.

The Spartan woman punishes the city’s General
yet inside her the mum groans 'he hurt nobody…
he just dispatched to Xerxes some captive nobles.'

The other women shout 'more stones, put more'
and push her violently to stack that stoning death.
She is filled with tears inside her Spartan self body.
Her son has glorified Greece at Plataeae battlefield,
he would redeem Hellespont, Cyprus! Now what?

Inside the mother a ruin, her Spartan self a cruelty,
a fiery screaming outwards: 'he is a miserable traitor,
he wrote to Xerxes to conclude fatal agreements.’

While the Spartan was building her son in the temple
she was strangling in her body the mother of her son,
like the poetess who was forced to serve alien interests
but she smashed her pen in the cell of her own mind.