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Gargoyles

The Guide’s brief mention of grotesque, a photograph

more ink blot than detail, smudge than features,

‘in the corbel table supporting the nave parapet’.

Parable by absence; the sceptic’s version

of church history. Somewhere in the dark

a plague face, twist of features into pain,

caricature theology, a reversed healing,

some mason taking the piss with a dean’s features.

Same loss or sadness or incompleteness

followed the day conference on war and child soldiers,

through the distribution of clay, shade of a suntan.

The face she made, with recesses for eyes and nose,

lop-sided twist of smile, tendency to topple,

could form a gargoyle in our wounded century.