That most feared confrontation.
 

Thie scene in which this story is set is a fictitious cemetery on a remote island. An island which had been disputed territory and which two nations had fought to possess. Two mothers, one from each nation, have made the difficult journey to visit the graves of their respective sons who have been killed in the fighting. They arrive at the cemetery at the same time.................

Across the cold green waters each had come to this barren place.
Aching arms holding flowers plucked from the soil of warmer homes left far behind.
Aching hearts holding memories of sons raised from the savage pain of birth,
through the joys and anxieties of childhood to the threshold of manhood,
To stand now, in still disbelieving agony, gazing down upon the fresh turned earth.

---In a faraway place a person with power bathed in a pool of admiration.---

One woman looked up from the grave,
Her eyes piercing the shroud which enveloped the other.Their eyes locked, and in that cold desolation the heat of anguish made hatred of their sorrow.
Scattering and trampling the flowers so carefully gathered they ran at each other, and with the awful power of grief they grappled,
Screaming words only each could understand.

---In another far away place, a person blind with principle kicked sand into the unblinking eyes of love.---

Upon the sodden turfs and in the mud they fought.
But in the exhaustion of their emptying their screeched obscenities gave way to gasping sobs,
Their flailing arms locked in embrace.
Their sore scratching fingers softly found each others lips
And down their touching cheeks ran mingled blood and tears.

---The person with power started suddenly and clutched at a face gone grey.
The person blind with principle stumbled and fell screaming into the bottomless pit of doubt.---

The women stood up, and back to back they each faced the sea surrounding this place where their sons had fought one another.
They held their arms above them, as if hanging from a cross, and together in a language neither understood they shrieked above the wind to the earth.

For a moment all became still and silent.

Then the Earth, mother herself, trembled at the cry of her children.

x.